Diane Vallere - Style & Error 02 - Buyer, Beware

by Diane Vallere

“I’m not sure. What’s your usual?” I asked Andi.

  “Diet RockStar and pomegranate vodka.”

  “Oh. I’ll have a—” I tried to think of something that sounded adult and serious. “Manhattan.”

  “Oooh, fancy!” Andi said.

  While the bartender disappeared to make our drinks, I wondered how I was going to keep up this newfound best friend routine. Turns out that didn’t matter, because I was sitting with a pro. Andi started a nonstop stream of chatter, about the totally perfect weather, the restaurant’s totally awesome calamari, the totally horrendous outfits the waitresses were forced to wear, and the totally hot hunks working behind the bar.

  “Don’t you just love bartenders? I married one once. Turns out the best thing about him was his name. We split up after a month, but he didn’t mind that I wanted to keep it.”

  As the bartender set our drinks in front of us, she continued. “Thanks, babe. This is Samantha. Sam, this is Cal. He’s one of my boyfriends.” She tipped her head back and smiled at him while running an ice cube down her throat. The bartender chuckled. “I have boyfriends all over now. They take care of me. And I take care of them. Right, Cal?” She flipped a credit card out of her wallet and handed it to him.

  “Wait, I’ll get these,” I said, fumbling for my own credit card while searching for a way to steer the conversation to Emily’s murder.

  “Absolutely not! I can expense this,” she said.

  “At least let me get the first round.”

  “Don’t worry! You have no idea how many receipts I have that are time stamped after midnight. Besides, you’re my top client these days. I’d do just about anything to make you happy.” She giggled.

  It seemed she’d delivered me my opening.

  “Then let’s toast why I’m your top client.” I raised my glass to hers. “To Vongole.”

  “Abso-freakin’-lutely. To Vongole.”

  I took a sip of my drink and recoiled at the taste, heavy with vermouth. How did Marilyn Monroe drink these? I looked at Andi. She’d finished more than half her drink on our toast. Good sign. That meant it might not be too hard to keep her talking. I sipped again, fighting the taste. I was in the middle of phrasing and rephrasing different prompts in my head when she spoke.

  “So, it’s great to have you at Heist. I mean, it’s totally sad what happened to Emily. Kyle’s miserable about it. But business is business, and you’re going to rock that job, I can already tell.”

  “I think I’m lucky to have such a strong team of supporters.”

  “Oh, you mean Belle? She’s great. Such an inspirational woman. You know, when she went through her divorce, it was pretty nasty. She totally pulled herself back up and reestablished who she was and now she’s even more respected than ever.” She finished off her drink. “You ready for another?”

  “Not yet,” I said, swirling the stem of my martini glass. “What do you think of Mallory?”

  She rolled her eyes. “She’s a little too by-the-book, if you ask me. We all want to be successful, right? So there’s got to be a little wiggle room in the numbers and orders. One time she had Heist hold a payment from us for six months because she said the collection wasn’t going to be profitable and they’d have to send back the orders. She claimed it was Emily’s strategy but I know it wasn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  “That’s the season we started giving Heist the discount. Suddenly, everything was coming up roses and we were getting paid within a week.”

  “I bet it wasn’t coming up roses for you,” I nudged, playing the new-found BFF confidant. Fifteen percent of the discounted order is a lot less than 15 percent of the original, even if Heist bought more.

  “Can you believe they totally took that into consideration? It went all the way to the top of Vongole, too. The owners agreed to pay me 15 percent on the original orders or 25 percent of the discounted orders. Either way, I win.”

  In all of my years in the industry, I had never heard of such a lucrative arrangement.

  “Now I just have to get Tradava back into my client base,” she said. She raised her hand to cover her berry-stained lips. “Oops! Shouldn’t have said that in front of you, right?”

  “I thought Heist negotiated an exclusive?”

  She spit her drink out in a spritz of surprise, and then mopped it up with a couple of promotional Bud Light napkins before the bartender could get to us.

  “No, Heist bought out my inventory so we couldn’t fill anyone else’s orders. But Tradava’s such a big account that we put together something for them, and Kyle ended up returning it. Something about the quality not being up to standard.” She drained her second drink and motioned for another round for each of us. “Poor guy, he can’t get over what happened at Heist. He keeps saying it’s his fault.”

  “Why? Because he and Emily had a fight?” I prompted, still wondering about Mallory’s version of that night.

  “No, because of what they were fighting about.”

  21

  I was surprised Andi knew they were fighting about Vongole. “I didn’t think anyone knew.”

  “Yes, Kyle does a good job hiding how much he hates her.”

  “Her? Her who?”

  “Belle.”

  “Kyle hates Belle? But people say—”

  “That’s why he hates her. With a passion. She won’t let that rumor die.”

  “That’s what Emily and Kyle were fighting about?”

  “Yes. He was always defending himself against that stupid rumor.”

  “That she got fired for canoodling with him in the boardroom?”

  “‘Canoodling’?! You’re funny. Yeah, that’s the rumor, but I can’t see it being true. He was way too devoted to Emily.” She sighed. “He used to send her flowers when they were at market, and room service breakfast in bed. Belle investigated him too. Accused him of expensing it to Tradava. Turns out he paid for all of that stuff himself.”

  “Did Belle apologize?”

  “Hell no. He wanted to leave Tradava and work at Heist with her, but then everyone was shocked when Belle was fired, and even more shocked when she was named Heist general manager a few weeks later. Kyle thought he’d have an in if he applied to the store, but then that nasty rumor started. Even if there was an open job that he was totally qualified for, he couldn’t apply. Everyone would have said he got the job because he was sleeping with Belle. He kept trying to make sure Emily didn’t believe the rumor, and I don’t think she did, but it just kept following them around. Belle didn’t exactly deny it either.”

  I thought about that for a second. “It’s not a bad rumor to have floating around about you, if you’re Belle. I just can’t figure out why Kyle told me some people think she’s still working for Tradava. Like there are people who think she’s taking everything she learns about Heist and reporting it back to someone at her former store.”

  “What? Girlfriend, I hear everything, and I never heard that one. She’s smart enough to do it though.” She reached out for her third drink. “I’m so thirsty tonight!” she said. She pulled the red plastic straw out of the glass, set it on her napkin, and took another drink. “But let me tell you, Kyle hates her. Haaaates her.”

  “Andi, do you have any pictures of Emily?”

  “Sure.” She pulled her BlackBerry out of her handbag and pushed the small buttons with blood red-painted thumbnails. “Here she is.” She tapped a few more buttons and handed me the phone. It was a picture of Kyle Trent and a blonde woman with their arms around each other. Large, toothy smiles covered their faces.

  “When was this taken?”

  She took her phone back and looked at the screen. “Last year. The night he proposed to her.” She stared at the screen. Her expression was less joy than jealousy.

  It got me thinking that something didn’t make sense. I needed to talk it all through, and there was only one person I could do that with.

  “It doesn’t make sense, right?” I asked Detective Loncar. He’d agr
eed to meet with me on the basis that I had information for him, info that might lead to a break in Emily’s case. At least that’s what I told him when I called, because it seemed the detective wanted to determine for himself how important my info really was.

  I recounted Andi’s gossip, though while I was repeating it, it felt more like I was in the middle of a high school love triangle and less like a murder investigation.

  “I mean, it sounds like a bunch of rumors.” I sat back in the folding chair and stared at Loncar, who sat behind his desk.

  “How well do you trust this Andi?”

  “Oh, as much as anyone else, I guess.”

  “She seems to know a lot of dirt on the people we’re watching.”

  “A lot of sales reps do. It’s a subtle form of blackmail. They hang out with you until you trip up and do something you’d rather not get around. It’s pretty standard in the fashion industry.”

  “Nice industry,” the detective said.

  I thought about her RockStar and vodka shooters. “I thought I was going to have a hard time getting away from her, but when I said I had to leave she said she had other plans too. Until she said that, I thought she was going to stay there all night.”

  “You sure she wasn’t playing? Sales reps have been known to close business deals over drinks.”

  “Did you get that from Glengarry Glen Ross?”

  “She might have thought you were a party girl,” Loncar continued as though I hadn’t interrupted him.

  “Do I look like a party girl?” I asked.

  Loncar looked down at my pearl necktie over the white shirt and black-and-white pinstriped vest, and then back at my face.

  “No, Ms. Kidd, you look like an upstanding citizen,” he said in a robotic voice.

  “This is a very nice outfit,” I said. I waited a few beats before adding, “Menswear is hot.”

  “Ms. Kidd, do you have anything else to tell me?”

  “When Andi was talking about Kyle and Belle, her eyes turned very focused. It was like staring into the eyes of the Cheshire cat at first, all zoned out and loopy, and then when she stood, she was completely in control.”

  “How many drinks did she have?”

  “Three.”

  “She didn’t get in a car, did she?”

  “No. The bartender called her a cab. It was no big thing to either of them, like she does this every day. I think she’s the party girl.”

  “Then maybe it is no big thing to her. People are allowed to blow off steam, Ms. Kidd.”

  I couldn’t help thinking the detective wasn’t putting the proper importance on my new information.

  I pulled away from the police station, circled the block a few times to make sure Dante wasn’t following me, and headed home. Halfway there I pulled into the parking lot of an ice cream store and parked in the far corner under a light. I went inside and ordered two scoops of black raspberry ice cream in a cup, carried it to my car, and ate it slowly while I thought about what I should do next. When I was finished, I pulled Kyle’s card out of my wallet and called the number.

  “Kyle, this is Samantha Kidd.” I hesitated, not entirely sure what I wanted to say. “I know it’s late, but I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

  “Samantha Kidd. I didn’t think you’d call. Funny thing is, I was just thinking about you.”

  “You were?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone, and then Kyle continued in his languorous voice. “I have something I think you might like. Something I wanted to give Emily the night we were at Heist. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, and for a moment I wondered if he was coming on to me. “I—I’m not looking for companionship tonight.”

  “I don’t know what it is you think I’m offering you, but the only ‘companionship’ I want right now comes from a bottle.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said.”

  “I’m confused. Do you want to give me something or do you want me to leave you alone?”

  “Where are you?”

  I hesitated. “The Tastee Freeze parking lot.”

  “Are you going to be there long? I can be there in ten minutes.”

  Considering he was seeking companionship from a bottle, I didn’t want to be the reason he got into a car.

  “I have a better idea. Why don’t I come to you?”

  “Fine. Here’s my address.”

  I felt around the floor of the car for a pen and came up with a mauve lip liner. I scribbled his address on the bottom of the empty ice cream cup and hung up.

  Kyle Trent lived in the Woodgate Apartments, a secluded set of buildings not far from the on-ramp to the highway. I parked by his building and glanced in the rear view mirror, wiping a smudge of black raspberry from my lower lip before getting out. The door to his apartment opened as I scaled the stairs out front.

  “Come on in,” he said. He wore a gray bathrobe over light blue pinstriped pajamas, and held a glass tumbler of something amber. He left the door open and I followed him inside.

  His apartment was sparsely furnished. A burgundy leather sofa faced an unlit fireplace. There were no pictures on the mantle. A collection of Chinese food takeout containers covered the maple coffee table, along with two empty beer bottles and an empty bag from McDonalds. The polished, professional Kyle Trent I’d first met at Heist and conversed with at Tradava was gone, and in his place was a man who reeked of desperation and a couple of days without a shower.

  “Thanks for meeting me. I wanted to ask you about Belle and Emily—”

  He waved his hand in front of me. “I don’t want to talk about any of this.”

  “But you said you had something for me?”

  “I do. I have a question.” He sat down on the burgundy leather sofa and pointed at me with the index finger of the hand holding the glass. “Why do you care so much about this? You didn’t even know her.”

  I didn’t know what I expected from my meeting with Kyle, but I didn’t expect him to question my motives. I looked at this man, who days ago could just as easily have graced the pages of a retailer’s catalog as he could be the buyer behind the merchandise. Kyle Trent, for all of his good looks, his confidence, and his ace-in-the-hole charm, was me. He was a buyer who did his job well, who was attracted to someone in his industry. Only, unlike me, who had accepted that buyers don’t date vendors, that companies don’t like romances that threaten the business, Kyle risked his job for his relationship with Emily and the two had fallen in love. And look where it had gotten him.

  I sat on the far end of the leather sofa and leaned forward, propping my elbows on my pinstriped pants. “I didn’t have to know her to see she was special,” I said softly.

  Kyle stared into the glass he held, swirling it around a few times. He leaned forward, set the glass on the coffee table, and held his head in his hands. His shoulders shook like he was crying.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I came over here, and I’m sorry for your loss. I’ll let myself out.” I stood and walked toward the door.

  “Samantha, wait,” Kyle said.

  I turned around and saw him pull a white envelope out of his bathrobe pocket. It was folded in half. He held it out to me.

  “I sealed it so nobody else would see it. I was planning to show it to Emily, but I never got the chance.”

  “What is it?”

  “It might explain a few things.”

  I took the envelope. If it had to do with Emily or Vongole or Belle, then he was right, I’d probably find it interesting. If it had to do with Tradava, he was risking his job to give it to me.

  “Do you want me to open it now?”

  “No. Please go. I want to be alone,” he said.

  At home, I triple-locked the front door, undid my pearl necktie, and tore open the envelope. Inside was a printout of a spreadsheet: Vongole Gross Margin Recap, with the season and year as heading. It was Tradava’s version of
the profit recap I’d seen on Mallory’s desk. I didn’t have the Heist version at home, but I didn’t need it to remember that Vongole was a very profitable vendor at Heist. That’s why it struck me that on Tradava’s recap, for one season, Vongole’s “profits” were a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in the hole. That’s not a growth strategy, I thought. That’s a business about to go belly-up.

  22

  I woke at six the next morning. I’d been up half the night, my mind abuzz with questions about the Tradava/Vongole recap. Profit and loss statements—or P&Ls, as they’re called—were standard spreadsheets in the industry, recaps that indicated gross sales and backed-out expenses to let a retailer identify whether or not a business was good for the bottom line. I had questions about what I’d read, questions that could only be answered once I compared the Heist profitability against the Tradava one. My best bet was to get into the store before it was filled with employees, customers, and Mallory.

  I had two cups of coffee and filled the rest of the morning with anxiety-ridden accessorizing. I stepped out of the house in a black and white polka dotted blouse and flouncy ivory and black silk skirt, a pair of pointy toed black patent leather pumps, and a black satin headband with a white camellia above my left ear. I knew I’d kissed off my attempts at undercover investigations.

  Worse, Dante sat on his motorcycle in the middle of my driveway.

  “You might want to go back inside and change. That’s not exactly appropriate for the back of a motorcycle.”

  “Why are you offering me a ride?”

  He held up a small metal thing with wires sticking out of it. “Cars don’t run without this.”

  “You vandalized my car?” I asked.

  I marched past him in my pointy-toed shoes and polka dots. I popped the hood of my car. Having used up most of what I knew about cars other than checking the oil, I stood, staring at the engine, torn between touching things so I looked like I knew what I was doing and stepping away to keep the car dirt off my outfit.