Diane Vallere - Style & Error 02 - Buyer, Beware

by Diane Vallere

  Everyone nodded but me.

  “Eddie, how long will it take you to make the replica?” Cat asked.

  “Not sure. I need measurements, pictures, specs. I need to conduct recon.”

  Dante pulled a folder of his own out from inside his motorcycle jacket and tossed it on the coffee table in front of Eddie. Cat leaned forward and Eddie opened the folder. I watched out of the corner of my eye. Eddie fanned a series of photos across the table. They featured every angle of the statue, along with newspaper clippings describing the material, installation, security, and measurements.

  “Is that what you need?” Dante asked.

  Eddie’s eyes went wide. “Where’d you—”

  “You guys aren’t the only ones who read the newspaper. Just seemed easier to be part of your team than try to steal it on my own. How long?”

  “With this info? I’ll review it tonight and work on materials tomorrow. I’ll take a couple of days off and can probably have this ready by the weekend.”

  “Good. So we all know our assignments?” Dante asked.

  The heads around the table bobbed. I pushed my chair away from the table and walked into the kitchen. Dante followed. I pulled a Fred Flintstone juice glass from the cabinet and filled it with tap water, effectively keeping my back to him.

  “You don’t like that we changed your plan.”

  “Doesn’t really matter. It’s not my plan anymore.”

  “Sure it is. The players may have changed, but the game is still the same. Just because people swapped parts doesn’t mean you didn’t design it. Besides, it’s best everyone take the role they’re most comfortable in.”

  I turned around and faced him. “You really wanted to try to steal it on your own?” I asked, leaning against the counter.

  “The thought occurred to me. I like a challenge.”

  “How do I know we can trust you?” I asked, swirling the water around in the glass. “I know nothing about you.”

  “You can keep me under surveillance if you’d like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide. Spend the next couple of days with me.”

  “I—I can’t,” I said, cursing my shaky voice. “I have to stay on task,” I finished.

  He shrugged. “I have to split. If Cat wants to stick around, tell her to call me when she’s ready for a ride.” He took my hand in his and flipped it so it was palm-side up. He picked up a pen from the counter and wrote a series of numbers across the fleshy part. “That’s my number.”

  “You’re her brother. I think she knows the number.”

  He capped the pen and set it back down on the counter. “I know she knows the number. That’s for you.”

  He walked to the front door, calling good-byes to Cat and Eddie, who were flipping through the Halston book. As much as I wanted to dive in and show them the outfit on page 157, I followed Dante because it was the hospitable thing to do.

  “You sure you can keep them focused?” he said. “Because this won’t work unless everyone stays on task.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  He reached down, tipped my chin back, and stared at me for an uncomfortable couple of seconds. “This turned out to be a pretty good night,” he said. He turned and left.

  Turns out, Eddie was right. Rarely do professionals move as quickly as beauticians who hear the phrase, “I need to look younger,” and the professionals I’d chosen from the back of the yellow pages were no exception. My brown hair had been highlighted and layered into a tumble of curls that hadn’t been allowed this kind of freedom in a decade. My blue-green eyes stood out against sun-kissed skin, the result of a week’s worth of spray-on tanning and bronzer to achieve a post-spring break glow. I traded foundation for tinted moisturizer, lipstick for lip-gloss, and fought my eyeliner habit. Cat bought me an I-FAD sweatshirt, laundered and dried a dozen times to give it a lived-in look. I drew the line at matching sweatpants, pairing the sweatshirt with a plaid, pleated skirt.

  It was uncanny to look in the mirror and see a face that only slightly resembled my own. It was even more uncanny to spend the next week wandering the college campus. Surprisingly, that’s all it took. One week of surveillance to figure out what we needed to know to pull off our plan. The most uncanny part of all of it was that it worked.

  After the theft, out hodge-podge team had regrouped at my house for a celebratory drink. It was close to two in the morning, but we were hyped up by the fact that we’d gotten away with thievery. Dante popped a bottle of champagne and we toasted our success. At least, Cat, Dante and I toasted our success. Eddie was upstairs getting the shoe polish off of his face.

  I pulled the bundle out of my handbag and unwrapped it. A wooden Puccetti statue on permanent loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to I-FAD. It was one of the few known works by Milo Puccetti, a student of Brancusi. It had resided on the college campus for the past five years, and we’d managed to swipe it, all because of a contest in the newspaper.

  “Who’s going to be in charge of Woody until the party?” Dante asked.

  “Woody?” I asked.

  Dante pointed toward the Puccetti. “Woody.”

  Cat rolled her eyes. “You can’t call him ‘Woody.’”

  “We can’t call him Puccetti,” Dante countered. “What do you suggest?”

  “Allen. Get it? Woody Allen.” Cat said.

  “What about Steve?” I asked.

  “Steve?” they answered in unison.

  “Woody Allen—Steve Allen. Steve.”

  “We’re naming him? Can I get in on this?” asked Eddie, towel drying the side of his bleached blond hair.

  “We went from Woody to Woody Allen to Steve Allen. Where do you want to go? Tag, you’re it. You seal the final name.”

  Eddie repeated after me. “Woody … Woody Allen … Steve Allen ….” He dropped the towel and shot two fists in the air. “Steve McQueen!”

  I dipped two fingers into my champagne glass and dabbed the base of the statue. “I hereby dub thee McQueen.”

  We stared at him, all twenty-four inches of him. It was the figure of a well-sculpted man, and I know size doesn’t matter but his twenty-four inches were awe-inspiring. Now we just had to get it to Heist and present it to the judging committee. That was the last detail on our agenda, and it would happen tomorrow night at the Pilferer’s Ball, the store’s opening party.

  Cat yawned. “Time for me to get home and go to bed. Dante, you want a ride?”

  Dante looked at me. I was still wearing my college-girl outfit, and even though it was a unisex sweatshirt, it felt a little like he was seeing me in my underwear.

  “Yes, Dante wants a ride,” I said.

  Eddie walked down the stairs. He was back to his usual shade of surfer-dude with his towel-dried hair sticking up in all directions. He tossed the towel on the end of the sofa. “You’re leaving already? Don’t you want to keep celebrating? Did I miss something?”

  And that’s when we heard the sirens.

  2

  I grabbed the towel from the sofa, wrapped up the statue, and pushed the bundle under the cushions. The sirens grew louder. It was obvious they were headed our direction. There was nothing to do but wait for them to come to the front door, announce themselves, and take us into custody. And, contest or not, we all knew we were guilty—guilty of stealing a priceless statue from a public institution.

  I fed my hand behind the blue tweed curtains and created an opening wide enough to look through. The cars didn’t turn into my driveway. They turned into my neighbor Nora’s. The sirens turned off, but the flashing lights pierced the darkness at evenly spaced intervals. We may have been tired fifteen minutes ago, but we were wide awake now.

  “Should we leave?” Cat asked.

  “At two o’clock in the morning, with the cops right outside the house? I don’t think so,” Eddie said.

  Dante reached down and untied his shoes. “Those aren’t police cars, they’re campus security. They’re p
arked in front of your neighbor’s house, and they’re going in.”

  Then he put his feet up on the ottoman. “Looks like I’m staying after all.”

  “Eddie, can I see you in the kitchen, please?” I went to the kitchen. He knew the routine by now.

  “I don’t think Dante staying over is a good idea,” I said.

  “He’s Cat’s brother. After tonight, I think you can trust him.”

  “It’s not him I’m worried about,” I said. I leaned forward and looked into the living room. Logan sat in the chair with Dante. He stared right at me, and I felt myself blush. “Having Dante around is going to be a little distracting, if you know what I mean.”

  “So what’s wrong with a little distraction?”

  I stepped backward, out of Dante’s line of vision, and pulled Eddie with me. “I’m finally in a place where I can start a relationship with Nick. Just because he’s halfway around the world right now doesn’t mean I’m going to blow that chance. Cat can crash upstairs with me. But you have to keep an eye on her brother. Can you help me with that?”

  “How’s Nick going to know? He didn’t even call you tonight.”

  “Shit.” I scampered to the living room to get the cell phone out of my handbag. Cat was asleep on the sofa, half-covered with the white afghan. Dante studied my face with an amused look on his.

  “Looks like my sister took the sofa. Got anywhere else I can sleep?”

  “The floor.” I grabbed my handbag and went back into the kitchen. When I powered the cell back up, the missed message alert beeped. I punched in the code. One message.

  “Samantha? It’s Nora. Your neighbor. Call me as soon as you get this. I need talk to you about something.”

  “It wasn’t Nick. It was Nora,” I said to Eddie.

  “As in next-door Nora?”

  “As in the-professor-for-the-college-we-just-stole-a-statue-from Nora. She said she had to talk to me about something.”

  We both looked at the wall between my house and hers. It would have made more sense if there’d been a window there.

  “I’m not calling her back now, not with the campus security there,” I said. “I’ll call her in the morning.”

  I woke up thinking about Nora. What was it she wanted to tell me? I called and left a message. I called two more times and hung up on the third ring. Around lunchtime I crossed the yard between us and rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. Her car was gone from her driveway, so I figured she’d gone out for the day. I’d try to call her later, but I had other things to think about.

  Tonight was the party at Heist, and after succeeding in our small-time perpetration, we were juiced to collect our prize money. The last part of our plan had been to arrive at the new department store with the statue bundled in my handbag. And don’t think it wasn’t hard to find an evening bag that accommodated a twenty-four-inch tall Puccetti statue, either.

  Scrub as I had, my new fake tan wasn’t budging, so I based my evening attire around my new carefree seventies-look. I pulled on an amber silk caftan with gold beading at the neckline and cuffs, gold shoulder duster earrings, and an armful of colorful bangle bracelets. The time I saved by not straightening my hair helped me still arrive on time.

  Eddie waited for me in the parking lot. His black tuxedo jacket opened to a Frankie Say Relax T-shirt. He paced back and forth, looking nervous, despite the message on his Tee.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Have you heard from Nora?”

  “No. I tried to call her but she wasn’t home. Why?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you this, but I signed the fake statue that we used for the swap.” He shrugged. “I guess it was a matter of pride. If anyone came along and stole the one we left, I wanted to prove they didn’t have the real one.”

  “It’s a priceless statue. They probably have better tests of authenticity than that.”

  “Okay, fine. I wanted to show off how well I copied it.”

  “So why are you asking about Nora?”

  “You said Nora was a professor at I-FAD. We stole the Puccetti from I-FAD, and they’d know it by now. I keep thinking about the campus security at her house. I don’t think we’re home free. In fact, I have a very bad feeling about tonight.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. “We’ll collect the prize money, and I’ll be able to pay my mortgage for a few more months. And get some new clothes, too.”

  Cat’s Suburban pulled up behind Eddie. She and Dante got out. Cat, ever the fashion plate, wore a vibrant purple one shoulder cocktail dress, layers of chiffon cut at a diagonal that ended halfway down her thighs. She crossed the parking lot expertly on glitter-encrusted strappy platform sandals. Dante followed, in a gold Nehru collared shirt with a paisley ascot knotted at the neck.

  He stepped close to me and slipped an arm around my waist. His hand was hot against the small of my back, even though there was a thin layer of silk between us. I tensed. He noticed. He moved his hand up and down in a small gesture of familiarity, and then pulled his arm away. The heat from his hand had spread through my entire body, leaving me in need of some air conditioning.

  “You two are not allowed to stand together tonight,” Cat said, pointing a finger back and forth between Dante and me. “It’s like it’s 1968.”

  We moved to the entrance. I wasn’t ready to show off our loot yet, but we were starting to draw a crowd in the parking lot.

  Once inside, our group moved to the accessories department, where a young man in a tuxedo held a tray of champagne flutes. I took one. Cat and Eddie each took a pair of sunglasses from a top-of-the-counter carousel and tried them on. A second later they exchanged pairs and checked their reflections again. I looked around us at the visuals and the merchandise. Heist had certainly one-upped Tradava in the merchandising department.

  Until Heist had announced they were moving to our town, Tradava had been the only other local retailer. Tradava was a family-owned chain of stores based in Ribbon. They’d shown interest in changing their image and staking claim to a more fashionable client base, but from what I could see tonight, Heist had steamrollered their attempts with an aggressive ad campaign. If Tradava was trying to change by whispering to the fashion crowd, Heist was screaming through a bullhorn and the message they projected was very effective.

  Images from Heist’s catalogs filled the store. The walls in the cosmetics department were covered with mug shots of young models in flawless makeup. Models in jeans stood with hands on the back of a squad car, a pose that showed off both their curves and the back pocket stitching of each brand of denim. Still others stood behind bars in a jail cell, in the tiniest whisper of lacy lingerie. My favorite showed a model in an orange jumpsuit scaling a pile of designer handbags to break out of prison. Their creative director had run with their theme, using gritty Helmut Newton-like photography to create the edgy ad campaign. It was creative. Fresh. Something completely different from what Tradava would have done, and it had been executed perfectly.

  I wandered away from my team, into the apparel department, taking it all in. Heist’s leather jackets weren’t locked up to a lockbox with indiscreet cables like other department stores, but were handcuffed to a ballet bar. I continued toward the shoe department, curious how their assortment compared to what I might have bought for Bentley’s. A pile of shoes, some of the most coveted styles I’d seen in the past pages of fashion magazines, sat in the middle of the department. A mannequin was at the center of the pile, staring out between stilettos as if hiding from pursuit. I touched the display. The shoes didn’t move; they’d been hot glued together. Any store that was willing to install visuals like this must have an unbelievable amount of merchandise to back it up. I wandered though the department, picking up a sample here and there. The tagline on every price tag in the store said it all: Our discounts are criminal!

  The world of fashion was one where I was comfortable, or I had been, once upon a time when I was on the industry’s payroll. But being on a budget had
put a serious damper on my shopping habits. I’d started wearing the clothes I found at the back of my closet. I was a walking exhibit of fashion through the ages, or at least the late seventies through last year.

  Even if I didn’t get depressed by the thought of waiting for last year’s fashions to be discounted to 50 percent off, at the moment, 50 percent off designer apparel was too rich for my dwindling checking account. Wandering through Heist, ogling the merchandise, I couldn’t help getting a familiar tingle. I wanted to try on these clothes. No, I wanted to buy these clothes, and go out into the world, a renovated version of myself ready for anything, the way I was when I first moved back to Ribbon six months ago.

  An attractive blond man in a black tuxedo stood at the rear of the handbag department, flipping through a bin of colorful clutch bags. He didn’t see me. His profile spoke of male models in underwear ads: that defined handsomeness that whispers of a confidence he’d known since a very early age. He was a pretty boy, with chiseled features and a square jaw line, but with the certain hardness that comes from living your twenties to the max. My guess was that this man knew his face was his ace. He eased his way past a wall of Prada, looking to both sides. That’s when I hit his line of vision.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Just a partygoer.” When he didn’t move on, I held out my hand. “Samantha Kidd.”

  “Kyle Trent.” His hand was warm and soft. He looked past me as though he was looking for someone else and then refocused his attention on my face. “What are you doing here? I thought the party was to be contained to the lounge area and the open bar.”

  “I couldn’t help myself. I’m admiring the assortments.” I fingered a teal-green, patent leather handbag that defied practicality. “It’s simply amazing. Like nothing I’ve seen.”

  He scowled. “You should tell Emily.”

  “Who’s Emily?” I asked, looking around for somebody else.