Diane Vallere - Style and Error 01 - Designer Dirty Laundry

by Diane Vallere

  “Has that happened for you?”

  “A few times. I’ve had my collections in major retailers for a while. I already have connections in the industry but now that I’m limiting my distribution, I need to have a different set of relationships. It’s not all about market week and potential department stores anymore. Now it’s about editorial coverage in magazines, a loyal client base, and capital.”

  “How exactly did you go about getting the funding to go solo?”

  “It wasn’t easy and it’s still not a done deal. Getting referrals from people in the industry, especially at a store like Tradava, helped. Without Patrick’s endorsement, I might have been looking at an entirely different set of circumstances. You have to find financial backers who are willing to invest in your collections and ideas and business plan but hopefully let your vision stand. Sometimes these backers have ideas of their own, and your vision gets lost. Best case scenario, you find a way to get the money with no strings attached.”

  I thought about the hundred large attached to the design competition and wondered again about the strings Patrick had pulled to get the funding. “So a large windfall could make a real difference to a new designer.”

  “For designers starting out, yes. Being in the right place at the right time doesn’t hurt, either. Publicity, getting people to know your name, that can make all the difference in the world.” He gestured toward the newspaper picture. “That’s what Amanda was hoping, at least.”

  “Could winning the design competition help you?” I asked tentatively, immediately wondering if I’d just blown the only opening I had to get him to talk about Amanda. But Nick had never mentioned his connection to the competition, and I didn’t know if there was bad blood there.

  Nick looked at me sharply. “Why would you ask something like that? I’m not in the competition.”

  “But you entered. I saw your application.”

  “Amanda entered me without asking. Technically it’s a design competition and I’m a designer. A couple of interns processed the paperwork and I got lost in the shuffle. When Patrick saw the candidates, he was afraid it would look bad to say there had been a mistake so we agreed he’d disqualify me. Stop guessing at things that have rational explanations, Kidd. If that’s what’s been bothering you, you should have asked me.”

  My mind wandered to the money. The contest. The contacts. The guaranteed order from Tradava. It would have been easy for an insider to gain favor from the judges by being closer than the competition. Amanda would already have friends on that judging panel. If her history with Patrick was less than favorable, his vote might not have gone in her favor. That might be something worth killing for. And Nick’s behavior, while temporarily explained, was still off. There was a reason he’d told me to stay away from Amanda and I still didn’t know what it was.

  Suddenly I wasn’t feeling so great. I carried our empty bowls to the sink and ran cold water over my wrists. My thoughts raced.

  “Do you know how I can get in touch with Amanda? If I want to ask her some questions?” I asked.

  Nick’s spoon clinked against the bottom of his bowl. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said without looking up.

  “Why not? She used to work at Tradava. Maybe she can give me some tips.”

  He pushed his bowl away from him with a shove. “I’m warning you, Samantha, keep Amanda out of this.”

  It was like a slap in the face. “Keep Amanda out of what?”

  He leaned back against the kitchen counter and his stare drilled holes into my gaze like root-beer barrel shards. “She’s moved on and you should too.”

  “Yeah? Well I’m trying to but the world, life, isn’t cooperating!” I leaned forward and waved my arms around. “That’s what this whole move to Ribbon was about—moving on. Only I can’t, Nick. I can’t move on because there are walls all around me, locking me in and not letting me move forward or backward, or even sideways.”

  He was startled by my response and a part of me couldn’t blame him. An instant later his face softened. “Come here,” he said, and opened his arms. I kept my distance. His arms dropped to his sides. “I guess the transition to Tradava has been tough on you.”

  “Things at Tradava are fine,” I snapped.

  “Are they?” He stared at me for too long. Long enough for me to wonder how much he really knew about my predicament. Long enough for me to crack under the pressure of his direct eye contact and look away. Long enough to realize how that must have looked to him and to look back.

  He stood from the table and picked up his jacket. Our eyes connected, but I stayed behind the counter. “Okay, if that’s how you want it, I guess I’ll be going now.”

  I followed him to the front door, my nerves fraying as we walked. When we reached the door, he turned around, catching me off guard. “You’re not as alone as you think you are, Kidd. You’re the one who’s building those walls.” The sweetness of his smile was disarming. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  I stared into his deep brown eyes, this time not breaking the connection. A few seconds later he pulled away and left. I shut the door behind him and triple-locked it.

  I didn’t waste time pushing the sofa in front of the door. I raced to the newspaper on the table to figure out what was going on. I checked the cover, then flipped through the pages one at a time. When I got to the page with Nick and Amanda, a round stain on the opposite page, probably from the base of my wine glass, stared back at me. No horns. No blacked out teeth. No nothing. That meant there were two newspapers. That meant I wasn’t the one who had marred Amanda’s image in a fit of wine and jealousy.

  That could mean only one thing.

  Someone else disliked Amanda more than I did.

  Chapter 20

  I slumped against the duct-tape-patched booth at the restaurant where Eddie and I arranged to meet. Three of the letters on their sign were burnt out and an A was on the fritz. Eddie lined up packets of sugar, not saying a word. I’d called him and demanded a meeting when I realized there were two newspapers and he had the one with the incriminating artwork.

  “There’s a killer setting me up,” I said in a low voice, and leaned forward. “And I might have information that could end all of this. But I’m afraid to go to the cops, even though they might be able to use what I know and my life can go back to normal.”

  “What do you have that you could actually take to the cops?” His attention remained focused on his sugar packet masterpiece while he spoke.

  “I have two newspapers, one with the ring of a wine stain on it from the other night and the one with the doodles.” I ticked items off on my fingers. “I have the empty wine bottle in the recycling bin too. Don’t they have some kind of tests that can show that it’s all the same wine, to prove something?”

  “What do you want them to prove, Sam? That you drank a bottle of wine while reading a fashion newspaper? All that would prove is that you’re a stylish lush.” In a sweeping gesture he pushed the delicate grid of sweeteners off to the side of the table.

  “What about Red? I saw her buying the same kind of seam binding that killed Patrick.”

  “How do you know it’s the same kind? Besides, didn’t you buy some yourself? A search of your house would turn it up as evidence.”

  “I don’t know how many different kinds there are. I just want to find something that can lead the police in another direction.” I didn’t like to admit that, in my efforts to remain clear of a murder investigation, I was unintentionally fabricating clues against myself. I put my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands. Eddie dumped a couple of packets of sugar into his coffee and stirred aggressively.

  “Here’s my reality,” I said from behind my hands. “I have a file on Patrick’s computer that I broke into with a password I happened to find. The file has reviews of the finalists’ collections and a list of Italian fashion designers, and neither one means anything to me. I have two copies of the same newspaper, one with a marked up Ama
nda, one not. An EMT jacket was put into the bottom drawer of the file cabinet sometime between my first day at Tradava when I found Patrick in the elevator and the night I spent at the store when someone dumped his body in the trash.” I buried my face in my hands again.

  “Anything else?” Eddie asked.

  I peeked at him from between my fingers. “This whole thing definitely has to do with the competition. Nick’s covering for Amanda. Michael stole something from Patrick’s office. Maries Paulson is scared for her life. Red demanded a meeting with Patrick the morning he died and it turns out she doesn’t even like him. Maybe there was no meeting. Maybe she did that so it looked like she had a reason for being at Tradava besides killing Patrick.” We were both silent, absorbing our recap. “I need to get into that gala,” I said, not for the first time.

  “Too bad I RSVP’d no,” Eddie mumbled.

  “You were invited?”

  “Of course. All of the management at Tradava was invited.”

  I sat up. “Why didn’t you say something?” Things were looking up. “Call them. Tell them you changed your mind. I’ll be your date.”

  “You’re not exactly my type,” he said. “No offense.”

  “Is that your reason?”

  “No.” He set the spoon down and pushed his hands away from him, rejecting my idea. “I’m saying no because I think it’s a bad idea. I don’t think you should be at the gala. If you’re right about the killer being there, it’s going to be dangerous. Not that I’m not enjoying the gossip aspect of all of this,” he waved his hands in big circles, “but gossip is one thing and murder is another. You’re in a jam and I’ll help you out when I can, but I’m not going to put you in the line of fire.”

  I tuned him out halfway through his diatribe, hearing only things like “jam” and “line of fire.” My mind, in top revise-your-game-plan mode, had already moved on.

  “Okay, new subject. Now that I know I didn’t black out Amanda’s picture, who would?”

  “If you hadn’t finished a bottle of wine yourself you would have known that before now.”

  “This is no time to pass judgment. Who would black out Amanda’s picture and why doesn’t Nick want me talking to her? Did she have any enemies at the store?” I asked, sitting bolt-upright.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Did she get along with Michael?”

  “No. They barely spoke.”

  “Would Patrick do it?”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “I hardly think it’s in character for the fashion director to draw horns on his assistant and leave the picture lying around the office.”

  “Okay, so if Patrick didn’t do it, who would? Why would someone want to black out her picture?”

  “Jealousy, anger, envy, annoyance, bitterness, to name a few reasons.”

  I didn’t comment but realized Eddie was listing the reasons I would have done it. Mental note … nah, don’t bother.

  A snippet of conversation between Nick and me floated around in my head. “Amanda was the previous trend specialist at Tradava,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “But she’s one of the designers in the file. Not just one of them but a finalist.”

  “So?”

  I closed my eyes in concentration, straining to retrieve mental transcripts of last night.

  “Nick was talking about going to different benefits and said something about her hoping to gain some exposure, to ‘see and be seen’.”

  “Did you ask him about her?”

  “Yes but all he did was warn me to leave her alone.”

  “Which obviously had little effect on you.”

  “I think he’s somehow connected.”

  “To what? The competition? The murder? Amanda?” Eddie asked.

  “That’s what I need to find out.”

  We went our separate ways. Eddie had the best of intentions, but he was wrong. Avoiding anything connected to the murder and the competition wasn’t going to help me. I had to return to the fundamentals. I needed to learn more about Patrick.

  Aside from my observations during our interview, what did I actually know about him? Were there people who missed him? Did he leave behind family? Was anyone sorry he was dead besides me? Was there going to be a memorial service? What kind of person was he? To find the real killer, I had to know more about the victim. More than I’d learned from our interviews. I had to study his life, his patterns, his history, like I was following a seam to figure out how best to alter a dress. If I followed the stitches I’d eventually come to the starting point and ending point, hopefully without fraying my nerves in the process.

  Back at home I went to work, writing up notes. Who was Patrick? Critic. Mentor. Judge. Boss. Tastemaker. Famous. Fashion Insider. Powerful. I scribbled over the preprinted blue lines on the blank page. Next: Eliminate clues that lead to me. That made me sound guilty. I lined through it and wrote Find other suspect(s). Why kill Patrick? Career advancement. Blackmail. Revenge. Inherit his ‘power of the pen’. Falsify his recent reviews. Information on laptop. DESIGN COMPETITION. Other thoughts poured from my mind and covered the page. Strangled with seam binding? Seam binding—fabric store—Florence. How does she tie in? I wondered about the ally I thought I had in Nick and realized with chilling awareness I wasn’t completely sure about his innocence. What is Nick hiding? He had a relationship with Amanda, who had a lot to gain by Patrick’s untimely death. Find out truth about Amanda.

  Who can I trust? followed finding out the truth about Amanda, and right about there I decided that, like it or not, I was going to have to take some covert action.

  I didn’t need Nick’s permission or blessing to talk to Amanda, I had her contact information in the file of applications. I hit *67 to hide my return number then called her. She answered on the third ring.

  “Could I speak to Ms. Amanda Ries, please?”

  “This is Amanda.”

  I paused and scanned the bookcase. “This is Donna Parker calling from the Style Section.”

  “Donna Parker? Like the books?”

  Crap. “Um, no. Donna Poker. Like the card game.” Stop babbling! “I’m checking some facts for a story we’re running on Patrick.” I let my voice trail off. “I understand you worked for him at Tradava?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And you’re a finalist in his design competition?”

  “That’s true too.”

  “Can you tell me anything about your competition?” I asked in a sudden bolt of ingenuity.

  “There’s only one person who poses a threat. The others are still doing the work of students. Even Patrick thought so.”

  Mentally I ticked off the names: Amanda, Michael, Nick, Clestes. I knew all of them but one.

  “Aren’t you worried about Clestes?” I held my breath, waiting for her response. When she spoke, it was in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Ms. Poker, if you’re really interested in talking about this, we need to meet face to face to talk. I know a few things that might help you out.”

  Chapter 21

  I made arrangements to meet Amanda at the public library. I didn’t care what Nick had said. I wasn’t letting this opportunity go to waste.

  The library stood in the downtown district, and since childhood, it inspired happy thoughts and an overwhelming fascination with the concept of trust. I was mesmerized by the thought that the information coded in a little plastic card told the woman behind the desk to trust I would return the books I checked out. The library had always been a building of answers and innocence. Upon entering it, I had always felt empowered. I could use the safety of its walls and the knowledge that it offered to somehow better my life.

  An eerie silence, more so than the usual library quiet, cloaked the building. Scruffy men in need of a shower read the newspapers and magazines to the left of the circulation desk, but the research terminals to the right were empty. I wandered the aisles and found a copy of Who’s Who: Fashion Edition. Balancing the book on my knee,
I flipped to the R’s. There was nothing where Ries, Amanda should have been. I shut the book harder than intended and a puff of dust fluttered in the sun’s rays. I mouthed an apology to the librarian.

  A brief search of the library’s database led me to several back issues of fashion magazines that referenced Patrick. I keyed the articles up, one by one, and read through Mirabella, Mademoiselle, and Glamour. Vogue carried a featurette on him as part of their “People Are Talking About …” series. It was the cover that was blown up to poster size and hung on Patrick’s wall. The Patrick that smiled at me from the article was a much younger man than I’d interviewed with weeks ago. One picture showed him standing next to Halston. The caption read, “Jersey? Sure!” Another showed him clinking champagne flutes with a radiant woman with white hair and trademark black glasses. The caption read Celebrating Carrie Donovan’s “29th” birthday. Patrick had hung out with fashion royalty, that was for sure.

  After reading the articles from the magazines, I moved my attention back to the Who’s Who. Patrick’s reputation blew me away. Reading about his start in the business, how he had an eye for talent that helped him identify new designers who went on to emerge as major contributors to the fashion world. He was credited for being one of the first American tastemakers, calling attention to stateside artisans once anonymous but now common knowledge. Article after article called him a friend to the unknown designer, encouraging those with talent to go out on their own and not let their careers be defined by the powerhouse labels that gave them their start. I began to see what Maries had meant when she said the competition was Patrick’s legacy. Establishing a forum for new designers was a big deal, and the success of the first competition would allow for subsequent contests.