“Why couldn’t you let me live my life?” she asked. Touches of white saliva spotted the corners of her mouth. “I killed her. I should have let it go, but you tried to protect me. Now two people are dead.”
“Nobody has to know what you did. It’ll be our secret,” Tony said.
Detective Loncar’s words resonated in my head. Love-family-money. The concentration pieces snapped back into their slots, and suddenly I knew why Andi Holloway drank so much, why her father would never let her leave the family business, and why she was so desperate to take down Tony Simms.
“You never let me try to achieve anything for myself. If you had believed in me, just once. If you had let me fail, let me learn about hard work, about what it feels like to succeed—” Andi spat at her father. “But now there’s no way out.”
“I worked hard to succeed so you wouldn’t have to. I can get you help.”
I fell to the floor and crawled the last few feet to the door. The key had landed somewhere around here. I padded my hands across the carpet in search of it. My fingernail snapped in half. I stifled the instinctive cry of pain, not wanting to draw attention to myself.
“I know all about your ‘hard work.’ You were never there for Mom, and you were never there for me.”
I flipped my cell phone open and powered it back on. The screen glowed neon blue. I cued up the text screen and typed Simms daughter Andi Holloway need help and then hit send. Who could think about verbs and apostrophes at a time like this?
I had to distract them, had to stall for help. There was a chance Dante had heard the argument and called the cops, which meant there was a glimmer of hope, a chance the good guys would burst through the door. If I could just stay alive until then.
“Andi, I made mistakes with you. I see that now. I should have been there for you, but it will all end tonight. I can help you. Put the gun down.”
I’d made the mistake of fussing with my phone instead of watching the Simms family reunion. Those were the worst words to hear while trapped in a lecture hall with a killer.
“Nobody else has to die.”
Those were a close second.
“I’ll never get away from you. If I’d have been caught, it would be over. But now I’ll never have a normal life. You did this to me. You made me this way.” Snot bubbled out of her nostrils as she sobbed and screamed.
“You won’t have to live with the reminders of killing Emily Hart and Belle DuChamp if you let me help you.”
“You’re right. I don’t have to live with the reminders, but you do.”
A gun fired.
I screamed.
Tony Simms shouted.
Sirens blared.
And Andi Holloway collapsed on the cold marble floor. Her body toppled like the Puccetti statue had from its pedestal, and it landed in the pool of blood that seeped from the back of her head onto the carpet.
37
The day Nick was scheduled to arrive in Ribbon was spent cleaning, showering, and changing into outfits from at least five different decades. I may have changed the sheets on my bed. I’d rather keep that to myself.
I didn’t know how I would feel when I saw him. The last time we spoke, things had been strained. I braced myself for what I would get when I opened the front door, whether it be lecture or hug.
I opened the front door. He stood on my porch, dressed in a cream knit turtleneck and plaid pants, and held a dozen pink roses wrapped in butcher paper, tied with twine in one hand, a shoe box in the other. His curly brown hair moved with a breeze that passed over us. His eyes, deeper brown than I remembered, sparkled with the reflection of the waning sun, highlighting golden flecks in the middle of their normal root-beer-barrel shade.
We stood there for a second, not talking. I was close enough that I saw his eyes go from mine to the fading bruise on my cheek, to my lips, and then back to my eyes. All of the flirtation, the innuendo, the chemistry from life before he’d gone to Italy flooded back.
“Samantha,” he said.
“Nick,” I said back.
“These are for you.” He held out the roses. “This too,” and extended the shoe box.
I took both. “Do you want to come in?” I asked.
Nick stepped forward. I stepped back. He stepped forward again and I tried to step back but the door to the hall closet behind me made that impossible. Nick put his fingers under my chin and tipped my face up to his. His lips brushed against mine once, twice, and then pressed down in a hot kiss. I dropped the flowers and the shoe box and buried my fingers in his hair as his hands moved down my neck, shoulders, and body.
When the kiss ended, he pulled away and touched his fingertips to my bruise.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Not anymore.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I looked up into the root-beer-barrel brown eyes I’d imagined so many times while he had been away.
“It’s okay. We’ve got all night. I’m not going anywhere.”
I took his hand and led him to the sofa. We sat next to each other. I tucked one bare foot under me and faced him. He reached out and twirled a lock of my hair through his fingertips.
“I didn’t expect the curls and the tan.”
“I didn’t expect the …” I looked at the front door where we’d kissed. “Roses.”
The lid had come off the shoe box when it fell, and one pale pink strappy sandal had fallen from tissue paper, resting on its side. The twine had come undone, and stems of roses scattered across the hardwood floor.
“I should put them in water.” I stood up and walked in front of Nick. He caught my hand and stood up next to me.
“Leave them,” he said.
He leaned down and we kissed again, like two teenagers with five minutes left before curfew. This time I pressed into him as if I could melt away whatever barrier Italy and the murders had put between us.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“Are you sure you want to hear this? The last thing you said to me was—”
“I hated that you were in the middle of a dangerous situation again, but it helped knowing you were working with the cops.”
I thought about my frustrating partnership with Detective Loncar. I’d expected something from him after the dust had settled on his investigation, maybe a thank-you note, maybe the key to the city. At minimum, I thought I deserved a third bouquet of flowers. I was still waiting.
“Let’s sit down.” I held Nick’s hand and led him to the sofa. I did need to talk about it. Talking make it real, might make the nightmares stop.
“Andi Holloway was Tony Simms’ daughter. She resented him, resented that he wasn’t a part of her life other than handing her job opportunities and money. He wasn’t a father to her. Andi was desperate to find someone who cared about her, to treat her like a full, visible, valuable human being. She saw how Kyle treated Emily and thought if Emily was out of the picture, that could be her.”
“She killed Emily at the gala?”
“That’s how I got involved. Andi took the statue at I-FAD. She knew it belonged to her father. She didn’t know we’d replaced the one that was there with a fake that Eddie had made. When she bludgeoned Emily, she did it with our fake. I think she thought she was killing Emily and framing Tony. The cops found it, and I got called in to explain it all to Detective Loncar.”
“And Belle?”
“Nobody really knows about that. Andi could have killed her. Tony could have killed her to protect Andi. Tony’s not saying anything, but he’s definitely not innocent. He’s the one who started the rumor about Belle DuChamp and Kyle Trent. He wanted Andi to think Kyle was a rat. He’d also been the one to funnel knock-offs into the two stores that carried Vongole, knowing that eventually the business would go belly-up and he could offer his daughter another job.”
Tony Simms had kept his daughter in his pocket, the way I’d put the Puccetti statue in my handbag, and Andi had carried that anger and resentment arou
nd with her like a purse filled with baggage. She’d been in and out of psychiatrists’ offices, dealing with abandonment issues. Just like she’d told me, she’d married a bartender early, divorcing him quickly but keeping his name.
Her hatred for her father ran much deeper than I ever could have imagined. If he’d been more of a real dad, not a mere figurehead, maybe this would have worked out differently. Instead of knock-off handbags and false success, Andi Holloway might have had a real life with ups and downs, failures and successes, highs and lows. Instead, desperation forced her into a declaration of her own independence. Some might say she punctuated the declaration with a bullet.
“What about Kyle?” Nick asked.
I picked up a postcard I’d received a few days ago. It pictured a forest in black and white, with one small tree in the middle. The leaves on the tree were green. The message on the back was short and sweet. Thank you for believing in me. Life goes on.—Kyle After his signature there was a PS: There’s an opening at Tradava if you’re interested. I handed the postcard to Nick, who read it and then set it down on the table.
“So that’s it,” I said.
“Is that it?”
I leaned against the sofa cushion and thought about what I hadn’t told Nick.
Mallory George did not apologize to me face to face but sent me an arrangement of bronze callas to rival the bouquet Detective Loncar had sent me at Heist. Her note was simple: I learned a lot from you. I taped it to my bathroom mirror and read it every morning while getting ready to continue my job search.
I donated half my wardrobe to charity. I was back in fashion, ready for whatever was next for me.
I didn’t apply for Kyle’s job.
A week after the showdown at the college, I went to Cat’s house for dinner. Eddie was there, but Dante was not. After dinner I drove to Dante’s apartment with the freshly laundered clothes he’d loaned me to wear to the college. The necktie lay folded on top of the pile.
I hadn’t seen Dante since the night at the college when everything went down. And with Nick back in town, I didn’t know if I was ready to analyze the way Dante made me feel. I carried the clothes to his front door. The lights were out, so I left them with a note. Thanks for the education.—S
When I got back to my car, I looked up the stairs. Dante leaned against the wooden banister in front of his door. I waved, and he tilted a bottle of beer in my direction. The next morning there was a note under my windshield. I don’t meet many women like you, Samantha Kidd.
I tucked that card in my underwear drawer.
Nick stretched his arms around me and pulled me close, kissing the tip of my nose. “I’m glad you worked this out of your system,” he said. “It is out of your system, right?”
I looked behind him to the small crystal bowl that sat on the end table, now filled with Atomic Fireballs.
“Kidd, you didn’t answer the question. Is it out of your system?”
I smiled and kissed him again.
About The Author
Diane Vallere is a textbook Capricorn. She writes both the Style & Error and Mad for Mod Mystery Series, and is currently working on the Fabric Shop Mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime. She is represented by Bookends Literary Agency. She started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since.
Read on for an excerpt from Pillow Stalk, the first book in the Mad for Mod Mystery Series
Excerpt
“Mr. Johnson, I’m calling to discuss the disposition of your mother’s estate,” I said into the yellow donut phone.
“Are you a lawyer?” asked a gruff voice on the other end of a crackly line.
“No, sir, I’m an interior decorator. Madison Night. I own Mad for Mod, on Greenville Avenue.” I paused, giving him time to react. When he didn’t, I continued. “I assure you I mean no disrespect. In my experience, you are about to be faced with the time consuming challenge of handling your mother’s affairs, and I am in a position to take a portion of that challenge off your to-do list.” Internally, I cringed at the holier-than-thou tone that had crept into my voice. It was an oral knee-jerk reaction to people not taking me seriously. “Mad for Mod specializes in mid-century modern design. Your mother’s house was—”
“What was your name again? Madison?” he snapped. “What are you, twenty?”
“Madison was my grandmother’s maiden name,” I offered. I pushed my long hair away from my face, and then used my index finger to free a couple of strands that were stuck to my hairline, thanks to the Dallas-in-May humidity. “I’m forty-seven, and I’ve been in this industry for over twenty years.” The man was obviously more distraught over the death of his mother than the fact that my grandmother’s surname had come into fashion sometime in the nineties, but at times like these, minor details could change the course of our conversation.
“My mom didn’t have anything valuable. Her whole house was insured for fifteen thousand dollars, and I’d be better off if it had burned down and I got the check. Now I’m stuck with a bunch of junk I could never convince her to throw away.”
I wrote $15,000? on the side of a real estate flyer that sat on my desk and put on my best can-do attitude. “Mr. Johnson, I’m prepared to make an offer on the entire estate. If you accept it, I can bring you a check tomorrow, and you can be on your way back to Cincinnati as soon as tomorrow night.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re offering to write me a check for stuff you haven’t even seen?”
“That’s correct.”
“Lady, if this is a joke, you have a lousy sense of humor.” He hung up on me.
I drummed my fingers against the top of my desk and stared at the flyer, temporarily distracted by the overdone graphics and the photo of the listing agent.
Pamela Ritter, a recently licensed realtor, stared back at me, a picture of blond hair and blue eyes not all that different from my own, though she was half my age. Blast from the Past! screamed the heading, above listings for a string of ranch houses on Mockingbird. Live like a Mad Man! promised the copy on the side. Turquoise bubbles filled the background of the paper, and starbursts, outlined in red, gave it a comic book Pow! Bam! Bop! feel.
Pamela had jumped on the new movement to capitalize on all things fifties, thanks to a recent pop culture focus on the Eisenhower era. I’d been nurturing my passion for mid-century decorating since I was a teenager, since I first watched Pillow Talk after learning that I shared a birthday with an actress named Doris Day. I had surrounded myself with items from the atomic age long before Pamela was born, and thanks to my business, I’d found a community of others who shared my interest and appreciated my knowledge. I crumpled up the flyer and tossed it at the trash bin. It bounced off the rim and landed on the carpet.
I glanced at the brushed gold starburst clock mounted close to the ceiling. Photos of rooms, stills from Doris Day movies, swatches of fabric and paint chips from the hardware store covered the bottom two thirds of the wall, thumb-tacked to cork squares I’d glued on top of the paint. Arrows and notes connected a couple of the inspiration points and identified those ideas that I had earmarked for a specific client. Merchandise and props to make an authentic mid-century room were not cheap or easy to come by, and I depended on the obituaries to identify estates that might be rich in the era’s style. Thelma Johnson, age seventy-nine, lifetime resident of a two bedroom split level in the M streets, had that kind of estate, but her son wasn’t interested in my sales pitch.
I twisted my blond hair back into a chignon, and secured it with a vintage hairpin. It was ten minutes to six. I could leave early. Nothing was going to happen in ten minutes. I flipped the open sign to closed, locked the doors, and carried the small bag of trash out the back door, swatting the light switch on the way. I emptied the trash into the dumpster and rummaged through my handbag for my keys before noticing the flat tire on my powder blue Alfa Romeo.
I bent next to the tire and a slash of pain shot through my left knee.
After a skiing accident two years ago, I had been left with a reminder that I had to look out for myself, because no one else would. The chronic pain forced me to acknowledge my limitations. It kept me from doing the kind of things that independent women knew how to do for themselves and Texas women took for granted that someone else would do for them. And today, it would keep me from getting home ten minutes early.
I went back inside the studio and called Hudson James, my handyman. “What are the chances you’re up for rescuing a damsel in distress?” I asked.
“Depends on the damsel.”
“Thanks to a flat tire, I’m stranded at the studio. I’d try to change it myself,” I said, but stopped when the humiliating reality of me calling a man to ask for help resonated in my ears. I never thought I’d be that kind of woman.
“Madison, it’s no problem. I’m in the neighborhood and I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
Hudson’s blue pickup truck pulled into the alley by my studio and parked next to the dumpster. His longish black hair had curled with the humidity, the front pushed to the side, behind his ear, the back flipping up against the collar of his black t-shirt. “I thought you were calling because you had a job for me,” he said.
I flushed. “I might,” I said, “I’m still working it out. A woman died—”
He held up a hand. “I don’t want to know the details.”
“It’s just business.”
“I look at you and I see sweetness and innocence, not a ruthless business woman.”
“Don’t let the blond hair and blue eyes fool you.”
“Honey, they had me fooled me the first time I laid eyes on you.” He winked and took the keys from my hand. Before he turned back to the car, his eyes swept over my body. “Is that a new dress?”
I looked down at my dress, a light blue fitted sheath that was significantly more wrinkled than it had been when I left the house hours ago. A series of circles in gingham, stripe, and polka dot had been appliquéd to the neckline and hem.
Diane Vallere - Style & Error 02 - Buyer, Beware Page 22