Diane Vallere - Style & Error 02 - Buyer, Beware

by Diane Vallere

  “You don’t agree with him?”

  “Sam, you were a buyer in New York, right? And you have been looking for a job. And you got one that you’re obviously qualified for.”

  “Y-yes. That’s right.”

  “The only person acting like it’s a big deal is you.”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too.” She leaned back against the sofa cushions and tucked the chenille blanket around her legs. “If you thought you had a chance in hell of working for Heist, you wouldn’t have entered that competition. You would have mentioned it at least.”

  “I see you and Dante have been comparing notes.”

  “Either Heist rejected your application and you were pissed off and wanted to get back at them, or you never even applied and they came to you because of your job qualifications. None of that is out of the ordinary. The only weird thing is that you kept it a secret. That’s why Eddie’s angry. His feelings are hurt.”

  “His feelings?” I asked. The idea that his reaction to my job at Heist came from something other than suspicion had never occurred to me. I looked at the doorway where Eddie had disappeared. Dante leaned against the doorframe, watching us.

  “I didn’t realize you were still here,” I said.

  “I’m leaving now. You need anything, sis?”

  “Celery and peanut butter.” She looked at me. “Are you going to stick around?”

  “I’m all yours.”

  “Bring Samantha some ice cream.”

  Dante took a swig from a bottle of water and left us alone.

  For the next two hours we ate pizza and played Monopoly while The Big Sleep played on TCM. The bottle of champagne had been opened, but I barely touched it. Considering a visit with Detective Loncar was in the near future, I thought it prudent to take it easy. Cat claimed to be nauseous and sipped at a glass of club soda. After Eddie’s earlier dig about my fashionista standing, I considered it a personal victory that the words “Heist” and “job” didn’t come up the rest of the time I was there. I stood to leave shortly after Eddie bought Boardwalk.

  It was quarter to ten. The police station wasn’t far from Cat’s house, and I made a couple of turns through her neighborhood, hopped on and off the highway, and pulled into a visitor space. It still gave me chills to park between a squadron of black and whites.

  Detective Loncar stood inside the front door with a black mug in his hand. “Thought you bailed on us.”

  “I had other things to do tonight. Important real estate transactions.”

  “Follow me.”

  We trekked along the now familiar path, over the might-be-dirty, might-be-clean gray linoleum tile, into the room that led to the room that was his office. I was starting to not notice the dinginess. I wondered if that’s how it was for him. Maybe he’d long ago tuned out the monochromatic shade of bland surrounding him.

  The detective poured me a mug of coffee without asking if I wanted it. I took a sip and gagged. No wonder he didn’t ask first. He was just trying to finish off a bad pot so he could start fresh.

  “I found something out about Kyle Trent,” I started.

  “Calm down for a second. Today I’m telling you something instead of the other way around. Remember those flowers?”

  “Yes.” I thought about the card. “You’d better start editing those cards before you send them.”

  “We told the florist to write whatever he wanted.” He hammered a couple of keys on his computer and pulled up an audio file.

  “Listen to this,” he said, while his knobby, arthritic finger repeatedly punched the enter key. The words were clear. “I happen to know there’s going to be an opening in shoes.” The background of the recording popped and fizzed like an Alka-Seltzer dropped into a cup of water, but the voice was unmistakable. Mallory George.

  “That’s the assistant buyer,” I said.

  “You know who she was talking to?’

  “No, but I wasn’t in the office much today.”

  He sat forward in his chair and narrowed his eyes at me. “Why’s that?”

  “I was looking into something at Tradava.”

  “You’re supposed to be looking into things at Heist. There’s more.” He punched the enter key again, and Mallory’s voice continued. “Either the job is mine, or there’s going to be another opening in handbags.”

  I pointed to his computer. “Is it my imagination, or was she just threatening to take me out? She said she would make another opening in handbags. Did she mean me? I think she means me—”

  “That’s what we thought. You’d better watch her. She’s obviously blackmailing someone. We think she knows more than she’s letting on, and we need you to find out what it is.”

  When this whole thing started, I’d accepted the job on the basis that:

  a) I needed a job, and

  b) There was a pretty good chance someone wasn’t going around knocking off handbag buyers.

  Only now I wasn’t so sure. And, because of point a, I was a handbag buyer, so if point b was in fact not true, then I was in the line of fire. That in itself was unsettling.

  I started the drive home, lost in my thoughts. It wasn’t until halfway to my house that I noticed a pair of headlights directly behind my car.

  I pulled onto the main street and turned left, and then made a sudden right at the next intersection. The sedan followed me. It was dark, and the car had tinted windows. Maybe it was just my imagination, after what Detective Loncar had played for me. Surely this was all in my head.

  I circled the neighborhood twice, unsure where to go. The car stayed on my tail. I shot through a yellow light and made an aggressive left turn, then a right, then pulled onto the highway’s access ramp. The signal changed behind me. I peered down from the circular ramp to see the pursuer caught at the light. I sped up, putting distance between myself and that intersection, and pulled into a gas station half a mile up the road. The wind whipped my hair around my face. My polyester dress was cool against my skin. I got out of the car and ran inside the EZ Mart, repeatedly looking over my shoulder.

  The clerk stood behind the counter talking to a pretty teenage girl. I crouched next to the Slushie machine and peered out the window. The highway was relatively quiet. This wasn’t the busiest stretch of it, just beyond the mall, and it was late enough that I could track every car that passed. A red sports car sped by, easily over the speed limit. Then a minivan.

  I wandered the aisles, keeping an eye on the road out front. There were no other cars in sight. I approached the counter, thinking I’d lost my tail—or that maybe Loncar was right and I needed to stop watching thrillers—when a dark sedan approached the entrance to the gas station.

  Considering my Honda del Sol hadn’t been produced since the eighties, my car wasn’t the most undercover vehicle in the world, but it was too late to think about that now. The sedan passed the first entrance but hooked a hard right into the exit. It circled around toward my car.

  I rushed to the counter. “I think I’m in trouble. Do you have a restroom?”

  He glanced at my Slushie. “Most people say that after they finish one of those.”

  “No, I’m being followed. Can I hide somewhere?”

  “Restroom’s outside.” He pushed a large wood block keychain toward me.

  “I can’t go outside. Do you have a stockroom?”

  “I don’t think you should help her,” the girlfriend said. “Are you wanted by the cops?”

  The clerk pulled the keychain back before I could grasp it.

  It was too late to answer because the chimes sounded over the EZ Mart door.

  18

  “You could make this a little easier, you know,” Dante said, taking a couple of steps toward me. He was wearing the same uniform he’d worn when posing as a security guard the night we robbed the I-FAD of the statue.

  “What are you doing? Besides scaring me to death?” I asked. I had half a mind to throw my Slushie at him and make a clean getaway.

  “C
ome with me.” He put an arm on my arm and steered me around toward the door.

  “I haven’t paid yet,” I said, stalling, turning back to face the clerk.

  “Everything okay, officer?” the teenaged twerp asked.

  “Okay, now, son. What does she owe you?”

  “It’s on the house,” the kid said.

  Dante looked at me and a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  “Thank you,” I called behind me. I left with Dante close behind.

  “Sit in my car,” he instructed. He kept a hand on my elbow while we walked to the navy sedan.

  “Don’t you drive a motorcycle?”

  “This is a rental.”

  “Why did you rent a car? You could have borrowed Cat’s car. She’s your sister. I don’t think she’d mind.”

  “You would have recognized her car.”

  “I’m the reason you rented a car? You did this to follow me?”

  “You went to the police station after you left my sister’s house. Why?”

  “That’s why you left, isn’t it? You waited until I left and followed me to the police? Is that why I never got any ice cream?”

  “Why?” he repeated.

  I ran my fingertips over my forehead a few times. This was not good. Deep breath in, deep breath out. I looked at Dante, who was waiting for my response.

  “Can we get inside? This wind keeps blowing my skirt up.”

  He unlocked the doors and I slid onto the blue fabric seat. The teenagers in the Quickie Mart were watching us. “Do we have to do this here? I feel like I’m half of a peep show.”

  “We could go back to your place,” he said.

  “On second thought, this is fine.”

  “Samantha, what were you doing with the police?”

  “I can’t talk about that.”

  “You’re working with them, aren’t you?”

  I repositioned myself on the front seat of the car, my back to the window. “Why do you expect me to talk to you? I barely know you.”

  “Compared to you, I’m an open book.”

  “Written in invisible ink,” I muttered.

  “Ask me anything.”

  “Okay, for starters, what do you do? Why are you here? Where did you come from? When are you leaving?”

  “Those are the starter questions? I’d hate to see how you end.”

  “See? It doesn’t feel good to be interrogated, does it?”

  Dante relaxed, one arm around the back of the seat, the other bent, resting on the dashboard.

  “I’m a photographer. Freelance. I take jobs where I get them. Sometimes that means a fashion shoot. Sometimes it means following someone around for insurance purposes. Sometimes it means catching people doing things they don’t want to be doing.”

  I waited, not sure if he was going to say more.

  “I live in Philadelphia. My sister lives here and I come to visit her from time to time. I’m here now because of the contest. I’m not leaving until it’s all wrapped up.” He stared intensely at me. I suspected he was waiting for a response. It would take longer than the time I intended to spend in the front seat of the car with him to absorb what he’d said, so I tucked it away for later.

  “I told you, I can’t talk about Heist.”

  Dante may have made a good confidante. He was close to Cat, who was close to Eddie, who rounded out the list of people I didn’t want to get involved. I couldn’t explain why I’d been so willing to take Tony Simms’ offer, but I could sure as hell understand my need to keep everyone else safe. Working with Detective Loncar gave me a sense of importance. It wasn’t a joke, and I wanted to keep it that way. I wanted to prove I could do this.

  “Here’s what I see,” Dante said when I didn’t speak. “You got yourself mixed up in something. I don’t know who talked you into it, but you’re shutting everybody out.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’re telling your friend in Italy, I don’t know, but that’s still pretty safe since he’s in another country. You’re not good at letting people in, are you?”

  I didn’t like that he’d hit the nail on the head after knowing me less than a week.

  “Is this about the police or about my character flaws?”

  “Samantha, I know I just met you, but I think I ‘get’ you. You don’t want to ask for help, and you don’t want to let anyone in. It’s like you have something to prove.” He leaned back against the seat and rubbed his hand across the bristly top of his hair, now a couple weeks past the buzz-cut stage.

  Like it or not, I couldn’t deny his accuracy. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Something happened to you after we stole that statue, but I can’t figure out what. You’re following a trail of breadcrumbs that didn’t start out with the loaf of bread.”

  “Yes it did. The breadcrumbs started at Heist,” I said, before realizing I was admitting to following the trail of breadcrumbs. Instead of shouting gotcha! like I expected, Dante didn’t even flinch at my confession.

  “What took you to Heist? The murder?”

  “The statue, but that’s because of the contest.”

  “Seems to me like there’s some kind of tie-in between the statue and the murder.”

  I sat for a couple of minutes, my hands wrapped around the forty-eight-ounce plastic Slushie cup. Water had condensed on the outside and coated my fingers. A few drops landed on my polyester dress and beaded up like Eddie’s water had earlier that night.

  “The owner came to visit me. He said I had a unique skill set, and that he wanted to hire me. At first I thought he was talking about my history as a buyer, since he was in need of a buyer, but he asked me to look around, to see if I noticed anything out of the ordinary. The store was trying to shut down the bad press they got. That night at the gala, someone murdered Emily Hart with our statue. When the cops found the statue in my handbag and pulled me aside, Tony Simms was in the room. He knew everything I knew.”

  “You think he doesn’t trust the cops?”

  “No, that’s not it. Detective Loncar is a good cop. He’s going to do what he can to find the murderer. He’s not concerned with how Heist comes off looking through this whole thing, or whether they’re going to still be able to open their doors for business in Ribbon without any lasting implications. I think that’s what Simms cares about. Not who killed his handbag buyer.”

  “Does this Tony Simms know every move you’re making?”

  “No, at least I don’t think so. I never told him I went to the cops.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It just seemed like a good idea to keep that part to myself.”

  Logan met me at the front door, meowing for cat food. I filled his bowl.

  I hadn’t wanted to confide in Dante, and truth be told I really didn’t, much. But what he’d said had got me thinking, and once I get to thinking, there’s really no stopping me. There was one person who knew something about the statue but was unconnected to Heist, and that was Nora. I’d been avoiding her since the theft, but now seemed like a good time to talk to her. It was much too late to show up on her doorstep, but I could see her silhouette through the window, and that meant she was still awake, so what was the problem with a phone call?

  She picked up after the fifth ring. I probably should have hung up after four.

  “It’s next-door Samantha. Did I wake you?”

  “No, I’m grading papers.” She stifled a yawn. “What’s keeping you up?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about what happened with that statue.”

  “I don’t know that I want to end my evening by discussing a murder. Why don’t you come by the college tomorrow afternoon, say, around five?”

  “Is that when your classes end?”

  “My last lecture ends at four forty-five. That’ll give me a chance to talk with the kids who have questions before they dash back to their dorms.”

  Nora really was a noble professor. I was thinking I’d give her an escape route from the three hundred students
taking the course. I agreed to meet her, because what was so wrong about cutting out of work early another day?

  The next morning I dressed in the black trousers and plunging vest Tony Simms had sent over to my house, only this time I wore a white cotton shirt with French cuffs under the vest and topped it with a long strand of pearls knotted like a necktie. I arrived at the store at eight o’clock. If Mallory was going to show up early, I wanted her to know she couldn’t count on being alone in the office.

  I spun Dante’s flowers around, this time fully aware Mallory was worth watching. By the time she arrived at eight thirty, I’d already reviewed a portion of the recaps she’d put in my inbox and had caught a couple of errors, too, which always helps to level the new boss/tenured-assistant-with-attitude playing field.

  “You’re here early.” She seemed surprised to see me.

  “I wanted to get a jumpstart on the day.”

  Mallory left for her adjacent office. For the next hour there were no sounds except for the clicking of keys on her keyboard.

  Heist’s offices may have been nice for professionalism and privacy, but at the moment I missed the old, un-renovated offices at Bentley’s where all of us were crowded into one room about ten feet square. You couldn’t get away with anything in that situation.

  The phone rang, and Belle’s name flashed on my caller ID.

  “Sam, Belle DuChamp here. I’m with Tony. We want to have an impromptu meeting to discuss the Vongole strategy. Can you come to my office in about fifteen minutes? Bring whatever history you have on their business: sell-through reports, profit analyses, and pending orders. Thanks. Bring Mallory too. I’d like her to sit in on this.” She hung up before I had the chance to respond. But if Tony Simms was in the building with her, it wasn’t like I had much of a chance to turn her down.

  I knocked on Mallory’s doorframe to announce my presence. “Belle just called. She wants to go over the Vongole strategy. Do you have it?”

  “There isn’t a Vongole strategy, as far as I know.”

  “Then I guess we’re making one up today. She asked for all the information we have on their history. I don’t know where we keep that, aside from the recaps you put in my inbox.”