Diane Vallere - Style & Error 02 - Buyer, Beware

by Diane Vallere

  “Emily Hart. She’s the handbag buyer.” Again he looked past me, and then behind him, as though he’d been chased. “Better yet, don’t. Her head’s big enough already. She’s around here somewhere. Just look for a woman in a little black dress.”

  “That’s everyone here.”

  “Not quite everyone,” he said, eyeing my amber silk caftan. “Anyway, I’d be willing to bet she’s the only one wearing a five-carat yellow diamond ring.”

  He let go of my hand, which had been growing sweaty under his awkwardly too-long handshake. My other hand clutched my handbag, knowing the Puccetti statue was inside. I fought the urge to wipe my palm against the silk of my ensemble, knowing it would leave a mark.

  “She thrives on compliments. If you see her, tell her what you think.” He continued past the shoe department and back the way I had come.

  As the attractive man left, I moved farther in toward the display wall of handbags. Simple white pegboard had been hung against the wall. Utilitarian metal pegs held clear Plexiglas shelves, and a soft glow from behind the pegboard illuminated the display through the small holes, backlighting the colorful assortment.

  The sign above the wall read “Vongole.” The Italian design house was the latest to join the ranks of it-bag designers, their designs spotted on the arms of most celebrities these days. Heist carried more of their designer handbags than I’d ever seen in one place, and that included the time I’d spent working in New York. Heck, that included the street corners in New York that sold the not-too-shabby knockoffs, too. I gazed up to the highest shelf, where a yellow matte crocodile bag called my name.

  I’ll just hold it for a second, I thought.

  The shelf was slightly higher than my reach. Fairly certain that the stolen Puccetti statue was not at risk, I set my own gold clutch on a glass case that held a display of wallets and small leather goods, and found a stepstool a negligent employee had forgotten to put away for the night. As I positioned the stool below the display shelf, I placed my hands on the pegboard for balance. I climbed up the three steps so I was within reach of the handbag, but I never got it off the shelf, because from my new perch about two feet off the ground, I saw something that made me forget about the yellow crocodile handbag altogether.

  To the left of the display wall was a metal gate that secured the department back stock from customers. And behind the metal gate, a body lay sprawled across the floor. While the case of small leather goods blocked my view of her head, I could see a very large yellow ring gleaming off the third finger of her left hand.

  3

  Eddie was right to have a bad feeling. The tingling excitement brought on from the merchandise surrounding me had turned to fear. I jumped off the ladder. My bracelets clinked and clanged against each other as I grabbed my own gold clutch and ran back to the party, where I found Cat trying on a pink headband with feathers. Eddie was next to her, straightening fixtures, even though this wasn’t his store.

  “Have you guys seen anybody in uniform?” I asked Eddie. “Police, security?”

  Behind them someone sprayed on too many pumps of perfume and scented the air with musk. Dante leaned against the scarf case, swirling his champagne around in the flute. I tugged on the sleeve of his gold shirt.

  “Have you seen anybody who looks official?” I asked him.

  “Define official,” he said.

  But I didn’t. I pushed past the three of them through the crowd of strangers, a difficult task in a caftan. When I reached the front of the store, two men stood, checking IDs.

  “Are you in charge?” I asked one of them.

  “I’m in charge,” said a stout man in a black suit, white shirt, black tie. “What’s the problem?”

  “A woman—in the handbag department—she’s—” I stopped. I didn’t know what she was. “She might need help.”

  “Might?” said the security officer.

  “Or it might be too late,” I added. I turned around and pushed back the way I had come. But before I had a chance to get the officer to the handbag department, a bloodcurdling scream pierced the store.

  Everyone’s heads whipped in the direction of the scream. Everyone except for Dante, who stared at me. He held his champagne flute out. I drained it in a matter of seconds and set it back on the counter.

  An hour later, I would have traded a sizeable portion of my anticipated prize money for another glass of champagne. We’d been told that no one could leave the store until after speaking to an officer. The crowd had been separated into groups, and Cat and Dante had been shuffled along with a different audience. I kept telling myself we hadn’t done anything wrong. We’d taken on the challenge Heist advertised in the newspaper. The theft we’d committed had to have been sanctioned by the college. Still, I felt guilt from the theft, from carrying around the stolen statue in my handbag, and from wandering parts of the store that were off-limits. I wondered how that would translate when the store security got around to talking to me. For the time being, I decided not to mention it.

  A short man in a dark business suit stood off to the side of our line. More than once our eyes connected. He drank a watery drink from a glass tumbler. His pinstriped suit fit him well, though at a height shorter than my own I wondered where he’d found it. Custom? That costs money. Gold cufflinks punctuated with diamonds glistened from his shirt. I glanced at his shoes. Yep, money. I hadn’t seen menswear like that since I worked at Bentley’s. The man continued to watch me—that’s exactly how it felt, like I was being watched—and I looked away, scanning the crowd, to hide my awkwardness.

  We were in a slow-moving line, creeping toward a couple of officers taking statements. There were too many of us to all be detained, so I imagined the cops were taking down names and contact information, checking that each person had a solid reason for being at this party, this night. Looking for someone who had infiltrated the fashionable happening for reason other than free champagne and a chance to shop the newest retailer one day early. Meanwhile, the advertising hanging around the store disturbed me.

  This couldn’t be one big publicity stunt, could it?

  “Why didn’t you just say you found a body?” Eddie whispered.

  “Because I don’t want that to become my catch phrase,” I answered, thinking of the last time I’d found a dead body and how it had complicated my life.

  Eddie bumped me with his elbow. “Look, there’s your friend.” He jutted his chin toward the man at the front of the line. He wore a rented tux that only kind of fit his shoulders. The sleeves were about a half inch too short, exposing his white shirt that didn’t have French cuffs. I scanned him down to his feet: round-toed oxfords with thick rubber soles.

  Detective Loncar.

  The detective was an older, graying man, thick around the middle, balding around the top. I’ve heard of women having an inexplicable attraction to police officers, something about the law and order, or the uniform, or the position of authority, but I didn’t get it. Detective Loncar did his job without any hint of flirtation or sexuality. Under different circumstances, I would have considered him a father figure. Our line advanced slowly, until we stood in front of him.

  “Samantha Kidd.” He turned to the young female officer to his right. “We already have her information on file.” She nodded one quick nod. “What brings you to Heist tonight?”

  “I’m a retailer. This is the competition. I wanted to see what they were all about.”

  He jotted a few notes on a tablet. “That’s it? No undercover work? No extracurricular activities?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Still live in the same house?”

  “Yes.”

  He jotted down a few more notes. “Okay. Sign here, please.” He handed me a clipboard filled with names, addresses, and phone numbers. I set my handbag down, took the offered pen, and signed my name with a less than customary flourish.

  “So I can leave now, right?” I asked, clipping the pen to the clipboard in an efficient manner.


  “Loncar, look,” the female officer said. She held my handbag. It had tipped on the counter, and a white bundle was exposed. Only the white bundle was no longer well wrapped, and the Puccetti statue peeked out of the top.

  The detective stared into my bag for an uncomfortable duration of time.

  “No, Ms. Kidd, I don’t think you can leave now. Follow me.” He picked up my handbag and walked toward a small, dark hallway. Then he turned back to the female officer and said, “Meet us in five.”

  I didn’t have a choice. I trailed behind until he reached a room, glowing with the particular blue that illuminates a Pepsi machine. “You want a soda?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sit down.”

  “Am I about to be interrogated?” I asked warily.

  “Ms. Kidd, we’ve been through this before. We don’t interrogate people in the employee lounge of department stores.” He pumped some change into the machine, punched the button with a jab of his right fist, and then repeated the routine. I took the Pepsi he offered. “Have a seat,” he instructed.

  I pulled a plastic chair out from under the folding table. I’d been in more than enough employee lounges of department stores to know that this one, expertly decorated in shades of gray, black, and a few punches of primary colors, would all too soon be spilled on and chipped, with paintings hanging slightly askew. Despite the best intentions of the store to provide a nice spot for breaks, this room would show signs of employee angst in a matter of weeks, if not days.

  I snapped the pull-tab on the Pepsi and took a swig. It tasted good. Detective Loncar pulled a chair next to me and set his soda on the table, still unopened. He put his hands on his head, rubbing the sides where there was still a ring of hair. Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and the female officer entered, only she wasn’t alone. The short businessman who had watched me earlier followed her into the room. The next person to enter was my neighbor, Nora.

  From what I’d seen since she moved in, Nora fit the part of professor perfectly. On most days she even wore jackets with elbow patches. She didn’t look nearly as surprised to see me as I was to see her. When everyone was seated, Loncar spoke.

  “Ms. Kidd, why don’t you start by telling us about the statue in your handbag.”

  “Heist had a contest advertised in the paper. The ad is right here.” Now that the statue was out of my handbag, the only thing left were my wallet, keys, and a few pieces of paper. One of the papers was the original ad from Heist.

  I handed over the torn piece of newsprint that I’d been carrying around since the day I’d seen it. “My friends and I thought it would be fun to enter, so we decided to try to steal the statue.”

  “Fun,” Detective Loncar repeated. The other people in the room remained silent. The Puccetti statue sat in the middle of the table like a centerpiece.

  “Ms. Kidd, we know about the contest.” Detective Loncar sat back in his chair. “That’s not the issue here. We just want to know how you got this statue.”

  “I’m telling you how I got the statue.”

  “No, you’re telling us why you have the statue. Explain how,” said the businessman.

  I turned to the cop. “You said I’m not being interrogated, right?” He nodded. “Then I want to know who everyone here is, and why you’re all asking me these questions.”

  Loncar scratched his head. “Fair enough. This is Officer Rachel McCord. Next to her is Tony Simms, owner of Heist. And Nora Black—”

  “I know Nora,” I interjected.

  “Your turn. Now, how …?”

  “It wasn’t that hard. We knew there would be a limited amount of time between stealing the statue and having the college discover that it was missing, and we knew we weren’t the only people who saw the ad in the paper. So I came up with a plan. Replace the statue with a fake. Then our competition could steal the fake and get caught, which would throw further suspicion off of us.”

  “You came up with the plan?” the detective asked. He had stopped taking notes, and that struck me as something of an insult.

  “Yes, I came up with the plan. You don’t believe me?” I leaned against the back of the seat and raked my curly hair into a low ponytail off my neck. When I let go the curls fell down my back on the outside of the caftan. I scanned the faces at the table. And then I told them how it had happened, that one night last week when Cat, Eddie, Dante, and I had congregated in my living room. I told them about the fake statue, the assigned roles, and my makeover, blushing when I remembered the way Dante had looked at me before he left.

  “Ms. Kidd, we’re waiting,” said the detective.

  “Waiting for what?”

  “You told us that you figured out what time to hit the museum, and your plan to duplicate the statue and replace it with a fake before anybody else got to it. And then you got quiet, and then your face turned red.”

  “And?” I asked. I wrinkled up my forehead and leaned forward. “Why am I here? We can’t be the only people who took the contest seriously.” I scanned their faces. They gave away nothing. Under different circumstances, it would have felt like a poker game.

  “Let me tell her what’s going on,” said Nora. She looked first at Tony and then at the cops. They each nodded consent.

  “That contest you mentioned, yes, the college agreed to participate, but they put me in charge of the original statue, which has been in a safe place since the ad ran in the paper. A replica was put on display at I-FAD, so the real statue wasn’t at risk. I was notified last night that someone had stolen the fake.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, relieved.

  “Not exactly,” Detective Loncar said. “You said when you stole the statue, you left one in its place.”

  “So what?”

  “That’s why you’re here. Earlier this evening your copy was used to bludgeon a woman to death.”

  4

  Oh dear, I thought. Only I didn’t use the word “dear.”

  “Samantha? Samantha?” Nora’s voice sounded like it was coming through a tunnel. “Officer? I think she’s going to pass out.”

  I held the Pepsi can up to my flushed cheeks. “Give me a second. I’ll be okay,” I mumbled. I chugged as much soda as I could without burning my throat with the carbonation. I suppressed a burp.

  “Where’s Eddie?”

  “I’m right here.”

  I twisted at the waist and saw him sitting in a chair behind me. I didn’t know how long he’d been present. He leaned forward and said quietly, “They brought me in after taking my statement about the statue. They found my signature.”

  The room was silent. Eddie sat back up in his chair and addressed the small group. “It might have been a copy to everyone else, but to me it was an original. You can see it right on the base, if you look under a magnifying glass.”

  He picked up the statue that sat in the middle of our table. “It would be right here.” He pointed to the soles of the naked man’s feet.

  We went over all the details of the theft more times than I could count. By the fifth time it was hard to sound like I wasn’t bragging about my plan and our—well, if I couldn’t call it success, I didn’t know what to call it. Finally, we were let go. There would be no climactic ten thousand-dollar prize money or free champagne from Heist in my future. Only a long, hot bath, a scowling cat, and a warm, comfy bed. And a phone call from Nick that I was going to try my damndest to miss, because no matter what role he played in my fantasy life, I wasn’t sure how to explain my reality, and I wasn’t sure tonight was the night to test out phone sex as distraction technique. I got home, turned off my cell phone and my answering machine, and dove between the sheets.

  The next morning I woke, brewed a pot of coffee, and fished the paper from the front yard. Last night had made the front page headline: Buyer Murdered at Retail Gala. I sat at my kitchen table reading over details that I both knew and didn’t know. The victim was Emily Hart, the handbag buyer for Heist. Like Nora had said, she was bludgeoned to death with Eddie’
s fake Puccetti statue, which had been found a few feet from the corpse. Forensics must have identified Eddie’s signature and corroborated my facts.

  I still hadn’t heard from Cat or Dante, who had been pulled into a separate line from us. The police woman who’d been in the employee lounge with us had gone to look for them after I’d given them up, but they’d been long gone.

  After two cups of coffee and a shower, I dressed in a pair of pink satin cargo pants from the mid-nineties, a gray cashmere hoodie from a Barbie collector website, and a pair of high-heeled black canvas sneakers with white rubber soles. Logan trailed me around the house and jumped up on the newspaper that I’d left open on the table. I scratched his ears.

  “See what happens when you let yourself get involved in hare-brained schemes?” I tried to flip the page but he pounced on the article, attacking my hand from under the newsprint. We played this game for a couple of minutes. This is the life. Me and my cat, having fun. No homicides. No stress. Well, except for needing to get a job.

  I rested my hand for a second and Logan swiped at my arm.

  “Ow!” I pulled back instinctively, but his claws had punctured the skin. With great pain I extracted them. He jumped down and started licking his paw like I’d given him cooties. Nice cat.

  The doorbell rang. It could have been any of a number of people, but when I opened the door to Tony Simms, owner of Heist, my breath caught in my throat.

  “Ms. Kidd. May I come in?”

  “Yes, of course,” I held the door open and allowed the compact man to enter. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” He followed me into the kitchen where I poured him a cup.

  “Cream? Sugar?” I asked.

  “Black.”

  I handed him the mug and accessorized my own refill with a healthy amount of milk. It was my third cup in an hour.

  “Ms. Kidd, I have a proposition for you,” he said.

  I sank down in a chair opposite him and half-wished I wasn’t wearing a Barbie sweatshirt. I glanced at the newspaper in front of him. I’d seen no mention of me in the article, and there’d been no reason for it, either. In last night’s activities, I was merely an innocent bystander. Ish.