Diane Vallere - Style and Error 01 - Designer Dirty Laundry

by Diane Vallere

  Chapter 11

  Eddie ushered me out of Tradava, past store security, and to his car. I didn’t put up a fight. He drove to the diner and led me to a booth in the back by the kitchen. We flipped our coffee cups over and a waitress filled them. Before either of us spoke, we each drained our mugs. Me from a need to snap out of the zombie-like trance I’d found myself in, and Eddie, probably, from caffeine addiction.

  “Who found him?” I asked. He’d been patient with me, allowing me space to wake up, to collect my wits, and to try to feel normal, though the idea of Patrick’s body being discovered in the dumpster would keep me from ever feeling normal again.

  “Michael Dubrecht. He said there was a meeting scheduled for the design competition, only, nobody else showed up. It’s on page four.” He pushed a newspaper in my direction. For the moment, I ignored it.

  I took another swig from my coffee mug then opened up to Eddie about what I knew. “Maries Paulson came to visit me yesterday.” I detailed her visit, including the part about the funding, the extortion, and the threats about going to the cops.

  “She’s probably right about the murder being connected to the competition. You know what killed him?”

  “Heart attack?” I said, though I already suspected this to be untrue.

  Eddie shook his head. “He was strangled with seam binding.” He waved the waitress over and ordered an egg white omelet and plain wheat toast. She turned to me and I waved her away.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I already told you how I get my information. Store gossip.”

  “And you trust it?”

  He leaned back against the vinyl booth. “Michael ran into the store and told a guy in security. He’s dating the counter manager for Clinique. One of my staff members was working on a new fragrance display next to her department.” He shrugged. “Most reliable source of information in the industry, if you ask me.”

  Eddie’s news left me at a loss for words. Last night I’d thought nothing about going to the store. I thought nothing could happen. Now I find out a body was dumped less than fifty feet from where I’d parked my car. Talk about too close for comfort.

  Eddie continued with other important facts of the previous night.

  Point A: Because of the thunderstorm, the building had been close to empty. The skeleton crew of managers had most likely left as quickly as possible, making it an ideal night for someone looking for an opportunity to dump a body.

  Point B: Patrick’s candy bars and fresh-squeezed lemonade were as legendary as he was. More often than not, visitors to his office scheduled appointments in the afternoon when they were guaranteed an offer of a snack.

  Point C: There were no laser beam grids in the store, but the killer had managed to get in there once before and might very easily have been there again.

  He didn’t mention a point D, but it hung in the air: I’d been sneaking around at Tradava during the night when Patrick’s body had been dumped. Some folks might find that suspicious.

  I told Eddie about the designer profiles sitting on my dining room table. “Michael is in the file. And Patrick was strangled with seam binding, and I can’t think of anybody who walks around with seam binding except for maybe a fashion designer. Somebody who entered the competition was going to walk away with one hundred thousand dollars. So, if you think you have a chance of winning, why kill the judge? That makes it seem like it’s one of the people who had no chance of winning. Maybe one of the designers who wasn’t a finalist.” I slouched down in the booth. “And that’s the bigger pile of candidates. Worse, now Patrick is dead, nobody knows where the money was coming from or where the money is. Maybe someone already took the money and skipped town.”

  “So we should try to figure out who skipped town?”

  “Sure. We can systematically try to track down over a hundred different designers who may or may not hold a grudge because they did or didn’t final in the competition. And as soon as we find out who is missing, we can call the cops.” But there was something wrong with that logic. Everything I’d taken to Detective Loncar had to do with what couldn’t be found. Patrick’s body, the laptop, and the EMT. Patrick’s body had turned up, and I had the laptop, which ironically endorsed my statement and made me look guilty at the same time. To introduce a hundred thousand dollars that was missing along with a designer who was missing would do little more than encourage him to file me under C for Crackpot or P for Person of Interest. My best bet was to steer clear of the police. All the way around.

  The waitress returned with Eddie’s food. She set a small plate with two strips of bacon in front of me, then smiled and held a finger up to her mouth, and tipped her head toward the man by the cashier. I assumed he was the manager and she was the angel of mercy who had delivered me the unexpected bounty of breakfast meat. I picked up a piece and snapped it off between my teeth.

  “Remember Red? She said something about the competition. I asked Maries about her and she said she was insignificant.” I thought for a second. “And don’t forget, she’s just one of the strange people who were traipsing around that morning.”

  “What strange people?”

  “Red, Michael, Nick,” I ticked off, then bit into a second piece of bacon.

  “Red came in asking for Patrick. Michael was Patrick’s assistant, and as far as I can remember, Nick didn’t actually come into the office.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That there’s nothing strange about any of those people being at Tradava. The only strange person is you.”

  “I resent that.”

  He changed the subject. “What else did you find last night? Anything in Patrick’s desk or files?”

  “No I actually found nothing in Patrick’s desk.”

  “How can you find nothing?”

  “There was a space in his desk drawer where something had been but wasn’t there. How much space do you think a hundred thousand dollars cash would take up?”

  “What else was in the drawer?”

  “Desk drawer stuff. Old calendar pages, mechanical pencils, paper clips, flu medicine. And a big empty space.”

  “Bigger than a breadbox?”

  “Big enough for a lot of dough, that’s for sure.”

  “You think he kept the prize money in cash in his desk drawer?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “You want to know what I think? You need to go home and get some sleep. You aren’t looking your best right now.”

  “Sleep—that doesn’t make sense either. How did I fall asleep at Tradava? I don’t pass out. Before two days ago I never passed out. Is there something special about the air quality in Ribbon since high school? Is it thinner? You have it piped in from the Pagoda?”

  Eddie ignored my questions. “Go home. Take a shower. Lay low. This will all blow over.”

  We slid out of the booth and he threw a twenty on the table by the bill. I fished two ones out of my wallet and tucked them under my coffee cup. The tip was almost as big as the bill, but I liked knowing, in the middle of everything else that was rapidly going wrong with my life, that there existed a waitress in a diner who was willing to slip me some bacon when I most needed it. I gave Eddie a head start and ignored his advice to lay low. Instead, I drove to the fabric store.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” said the plump woman measuring fabric on the cutting table at Pins & Needles. She wore a red taffeta smock buttoned up the front over a white cotton shirt and black pencil skirt. A pair of gold scissors hung from a chain around her neck. A white plastic nametag that said Florence was pinned to her shoulder.

  The shop was long and narrow, and the walls were lined with bolts of fabric sandwiched tightly on high-gloss white shelves. Bust forms stood like sentries around the store, draped with silk, chiffon, plisse, and cashmere, secured with little more than an array of pins. The entire interior was like a time warp; I half expected Edith Head to step out from the stockroom.

  “Now, h
ow may I help you?” Florence asked while attaching a small hand-written price tag to the yardage of fabric she had carefully measured moments before.

  “Can you tell me where I can find the seam binding?”

  She pointed across the store. “Notions are with the zippers and thread. Past the fixture of gabardine.”

  I eased past the cutting table and followed her directions to the wall of notions. A small fixture about the size of a doghouse was pushed in a corner and stocked with zippers, bias tape, and the item I’d come here to find: seam binding. I pulled a package out and turned it over in my hands.

  “Are you finding everything okay, dear?” asked Florence, who had silently reappeared next to me. I glanced at her feet, in sensible shoes with rubber soles. If I were going to take up sneaking around, I might need to find out where she bought them.

  “I’m not sure. I think this is what I’m looking for.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Not a lot of people still use it, though it’s been a hot seller lately.”

  This piqued my interest. “Why would that be?”

  “I imagine it’s because of the competition. A few of the designers have been in here to purchase it.”

  “I didn’t realize the competition was so well known.”

  “My dear, Ribbon isn’t the biggest city in Pennsylvania, but Patrick’s competition has given us something to talk about. Don’t let the smock and the sensible shoes fool you, I run this fabric store, and I have a longstanding love affair with fashion. My business is based on it. If I didn’t know about the competition, people would question my expertise.”

  “Do you know the designers?”

  “Of course! Most of them are regulars.”

  “Is Michael Dubrecht a regular?”

  “Oh, that Michael is such a nice boy. Always shops the remnants. He has such grand ideas but not very much money.”

  A bell rang at the front of the store and Florence excused herself before I could continue asking questions, though, I wondered how long Florence would gossip with me if I’d simply stood around rattling off names of suspects. I needed a better plan, more concrete questions. Lost in my thoughts, I left the store and started the drive home.

  Two traffic lights from the store I saw a small BMW turn right at the intersection. It could have been black, it could have been gray, and it could have been navy blue. I was less interested in the color of the car than the color of the hair of the driver. Red.

  I did an illegal U-turn when the light changed and hoped the Ribbon police force was out trying to catch murderers and not watching for traffic violations. I weaved through traffic, looking for a black, gray, or navy blue sedan. I found it just as it made the left hand turn into the Pins & Needles parking lot.

  Red parked in a space close to the front door. I parked by the rear of the lot. Aside from her license plate number and the fact that her car was black, gray, or navy blue, there wasn’t much I would learn by sitting there, watching her parked car, so for the second time that day, I headed inside.

  “Back so soon?” called out Florence as the bell chimed over head. She stood inside the cutting table, measuring off a bolt of cobalt blue silk jacquard.

  “I forgot my list,” I said, waving an old receipt I’d grabbed from the center console before coming back inside. I returned to the Notions aisle. When I rounded the corner, Red stood by the seam binding, filling her basket with packages.

  Her brilliant hair hung to the side of her face. Her ankle-length dress bore the asymmetric and angular lines of a Japanese designer, but she’d cinched it at her waist with a leopard-printed patent leather obi belt.

  “Stocking up?” I said as I approached.

  She looked up from the fixture, noticeably startled by my voice. “I didn’t realize anyone was there. What did you say?” She looked at her basket. “Oh, seam binding. This is the only store that carries the kind I like.”

  “I didn’t realize seam bindings varied that much. What’s so great about that brand?”

  “Most of the newer ones are rayon but this one is polyester. I like the feel of it in my hands. Not everyone uses seam binding, but you’d be amazed at what you can get away with when you use it.”

  Interesting choice of words. “Are you a designer?” I pressed.

  “I like to think so, but the jury is still out from the rest of the world. I own a boutique at the Designer Outlet Center.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a business card. I glanced at the name: Catnip. Underneath, in a neat cursive font, the card said ‘Ribbon Designer Outlets’, followed by an address, phone number, and email. There was no name on the card. As I took it from her hand, she stared past me, across the store. I turned to follow her gaze but saw nothing. “I have to leave,” she said abruptly, abandoning her basket by my feet.

  She ducked out the door that faced the back alley, leaving the tinkling of chimes overhead in her wake. I still didn’t know how she was connected to Patrick but this time I knew where to find her. I picked up a package of seam binding and turned it over in my hands. One dollar and thirty cents. Seemed like a small price to pay for a murder weapon.

  Chapter 12

  When I returned home I dumped my handbag on the floor inside my front door and powered up the laptop. I called to Logan, but he didn’t appear. A noise emanated from behind the door to the basement. When I opened it a bolt of black fur shot past me. Food or litter box? Logan bee-lined for the food bowl, which meant there was probably a small mess in the basement. I headed down the rickety stairs to find the spot he had chosen to leave his mark. A sickening smell hit me and I turned on the light switch, gasping at the sight.

  Only a few days ago I had sat in front of the house looking at the lilac bushes. Gazing fondly at the crabapple trees. Recalling summer nights, sitting on the porch swing with my dad. I’d managed to edit the leaky basement from my memories, had forgotten a storm of any magnitude would turn the concrete floor into a murky indoor swimming pool, ruining anything not at least two feet above floor level.

  The rising water level claimed paperback books, back issues of fashion magazines, and broken TV sets left in a state of disrepair ages ago. I wondered, not for the first time, why I was trying so hard to make this work. Just pick up the phone and call your old boss, said a voice inside my head. Ask them to take you back. Better yet, call mom and dad. Tell them you need their help. As I watched my childhood belongings swirl around in the muck, I knew I wouldn’t make that call.

  Thoughts of the sixty hour work weeks, the daily battles with my landlord and dry cleaner, the inconvenience of paying to park in a garage where I couldn’t get my car when I needed it flooded my mind like the water flooding the basement. They made up a patchwork maxi-skirt of reasons for why I’d been so willing to leave. A belly full of cupcakes and a giant card signed by my peers had been enough of a send-off. I had made the decision to start over for me. I wasn’t going to throw it all away over some soggy cardboard boxes.

  I had a flashback to my early years when it was the family responsibility to carry buckets of water out of the basement and realized what I had to do. My dad’s rubber fishing waders were propped along a wall in the garage and I pulled them on, even though they were a few sizes too big. I trudged down the stairs and located a bucket.

  Several hours and inventive curses toward the previous owners later (I’d suspended familial loyalty within the first half hour of work; there was a little thing called ‘disclosure’ they’d ignored when they sold me the house) the water level had waned from feet to inches. Autopilot had replaced exhaustion. The rancid smell of decades-old memories and waterlogged mildew turned my stomach. I’d done what I could, for now. I hiked back up the open wooden steps. Logan sat at the top of the stairs, cleaning himself. He made a lazy attempt at a meow, as if to say I should consider cleaning myself up too. I peeled off the wet everything: boots, socks, clothes, underwear, and left them in a trail to the bathroom where I sho
wered. The last thing I remembered was collapsing into my bed in the buff, completely oblivious to the sun shining through the curtains.

  I woke with Logan swatting at my head. I pulled on a Dick Dale T-shirt over a fresh set of undies and padded to the kitchen. As I rounded the corner, the doorbell rang. I let out an inhuman sound and hid behind the wall. My mind filled with warnings not to open the door to strangers, and I armed myself with a bread knife.

  “Kidd, it’s Nick Taylor. I know you’re in there, I heard you scream. Will you open the door already?”

  For the second time in as many days I slammed the laptop shut and covered it in a pile of newspapers scattered on the table. I opened the door, forgetting I was still grasping the bread knife. He took a step backward. His eyes darted to the hand holding the knife then grew darker as his gaze shifted to my lower half.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “May I come in?”

  “No.” Don’t trust him! sounded in my head. I stood in his way, one hand on the door, the other on the frame. I was a one-woman bouncer in a guitar-god T-shirt and cotton panties.

  I was in my panties.

  My face flushed with embarrassment. “Wait here,” I said quickly, jabbing at the air between us like a swashbuckler with the world’s smallest sword. I slammed the door in his face and ran upstairs, jumped into a pair of jeans that had been in the corner, and returned downstairs. No need to abandon my weapon now, I thought, and trained the bread knife on him while I opened the door again. “What do you want?” I asked.

  He scanned my body before looking me in the face. “I forgot to give you this when you were in my store.” He held out the plum laptop case. At least one of us knew it was empty. At least one of us chose to keep that fact to ourselves in pursuit of more important information.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “You left it behind at Tradava. After I walked you to the stairwell, I went back to the shoe department. That’s when I saw it.” He extended the bag toward me and I took it. I searched his face for an indication he knew it was empty. I got nothing.