Diane Vallere - Style & Error 03 - The Brim Reaper

by Diane Vallere

  “Hello, Ms. Kidd,” he said.

  I waited for a second, trying to think up small talk, and came up short.

  “Was there something you wanted to tell me, or is this a social call?”

  “Something happened at the museum last night.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, good. You know. I mean, of course you know. There were police there.”

  “Were you there, Ms. Kidd?”

  “No, I wasn’t. I was far away from there. I heard about it and thought you should know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you. What happened?”

  “You’re asking me to tell you what happened at the museum last night, the same incident that you called to tell me about. Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you driving?”

  “Yes, but I have you on speaker.”

  “Ms. Kidd, pull over. Into a parking lot or something. Call me back.”

  “Why?”

  “Just call me back when you’re still.”

  I swung my small convertible across two lanes of traffic, turned left into the lot outside of the Sunny Suds Laundromat, and then called back the detective.

  “Hi, Detective, I’m still.”

  “Ms. Kidd, an employee was stabbed at the museum last night. Thomas Daum. Do you know him?”

  23

  “Dr. Daum was stabbed? Is he okay?” I asked.

  “He’s in the hospital.”

  “I—I have to go.” I disconnected and stumbled out of the car and into the Laundromat. It was empty, though a few machines were running. I collapsed onto a green plastic chair in front of an industrial dryer and stared at the clothes tossing around in a circle.

  I couldn’t think straight. This wasn’t some random act of aggression I usually heard about on the news. Eddie’s situation involved a murder and a stabbing and neither one of us knew what else. I hadn’t even seen Dr. Daum last night. If he was at the museum, then who else had been there that I didn’t know about? Did he know something, had he confronted someone? Had he been stabbed in order to keep quiet?

  I felt sick. I left Eddie an urgent message, a text, and a couple of telepathic messages. I returned to my car and called Nick. My unanswered call dumped into his voice mail and I simply asked me to call him back. There would be time for explanations later. In a fog, I drove home.

  I called out for Eddie as soon as I had the front door unlocked. I found him in the kitchen stirring a pot of something red. I didn’t know any other way to say it except the truth.

  “Dr. Daum was stabbed last night,” I blurted.

  Eddie dropped the spoon to the floor. Sauce spattered down the front of the cabinet and onto the legs of his concrete-colored cargo pants. He ran his hands over his face and then his head. Tiny bristles of blond hair had already started to grow in. “When? How?”

  “Last night. At the museum.”

  “I was supposed to be at the museum last night.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “Thad called after you left. He wanted to see if I was on my way. You were right.” He sank onto the kitchen floor. His back pocket sopped up more of the sauce spill.

  Logan padded into the kitchen and sniffed the fallen ladle. He patted it with his paw, licked the sauce, and followed with a pfft sound. He looked at Eddie, meowed, and slunk away.

  I scanned the floor for signs of errant red sauce drops. Seeing none, I sat down with him. “The detective told me Dr. Daum is at the hospital.”

  “The detective called you?”

  “I called him. I thought he should know about the museum last night.”

  “But—”

  “Yes. He already knew. He thought I was there. I told him I wasn’t and things got a little jumbled until I asked him about what happened. He told me about Dr. Daum.”

  “So what did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. After his news I went blank and hung up. I left a message for Nick to call me, and I came home.”

  We sat in silence for a couple of minutes as he absorbed this new turn of events.

  “I can’t believe Dr. Daum was stabbed. I can’t believe I’m involved in all of this.” He held his knees close to his chest.

  “All of what? Do you have any idea what you’re involved in?”

  He shook his head. I waited to see if there was going to be a second of all, but after another stretch of silence, I assumed not.

  Eddie stood up and held out a hand to help me up next. I followed him to the living room where he rooted around inside a duffle bag, tossing a pair of worn black and white checkered Vans to the floor. Considering he’d bought eighteen new pair, I was surprised he was still wearing the ones he’d owned since I met him.

  “I don’t know what to do, Dude,” he said.

  “I think we need to go to the hospital.”

  He looked down at his outfit. “Do you have anything around here that doesn’t look so much like me?”

  “Wait here.”

  When we pulled into the parking lot, I was in an ivory fisherman’s sweater, dark denim jeans with a wide cuff, and the moccasins from the museum gift shop. Eddie wore a windbreaker and a pair of black jeans with seashells printed on them, both courtesy of my dad’s abandoned box of painting clothes. On his feet was a pair of his new sneakers: camouflage. Though it was too late for the sun to be an issue, half of his face was hidden behind a pair of blue blockers we found in a drawer in my kitchen.

  We sat in the waiting area until the current visitors left. Eddie flipped through a gossip magazine that dished on celebrity marriages that had long since ended in divorce, and I lost myself in a two-year old issue of Harper’s Bazaar. In the midst of an article about orange being the new pink, Eddie leaned over.

  “I’m not going to let them get away with this. I might know something that will help the cops catch Thad.”

  “Catch Thad doing what?” a voice behind us asked.

  Dr. Daum stood in the doorway to the visiting area. His eyes were red and his suit was rumpled, like he’d worn it while sleeping in the backseat of a very small car.

  I jumped up and without thinking threw my arms around him. “Dr. Daum! How are you—what are you—are you okay?”

  Eddie sprang to his feet. “Dr. Daum? Where?”

  I snatched the sunglasses off Eddie’s face. He blinked a few times until he recognized the retired museum director standing in front of us.

  Dr. Daum looked bad, worse than I’d ever seen him, but there was no way he’d been stabbed in the last twenty-four hours.

  “It’s wonderful of the two of you to be here. My son’s had a hard time. It will be good for his spirits to see someone other than me sitting by his side.”

  “Your son?”

  “That’s why you’re here, correct?”

  If Dr. Daum wasn’t in a hospital bed, then we really didn’t know why we were there.

  “Come with me. I’ll walk you to his room.” Dr. Daum entered the room first and spoke. “Thomas, you’ve got some visitors I think you’ll enjoy.”

  He moved aside and Eddie rushed over to the bed. “Thad?”

  24

  Thad’s normally almond-colored skin appeared blanched. A respirator sat to the left of his bed. The bed itself was inclined enough to keep him from falling asleep. A mass of rumpled sheets was bunched around his waist and covered his lower half. His white hospital gown had two small stains that had resisted bleach, and his normally clean-shaven head was dusted with the black stubble of hair growing in due to a life-threatening shift in priorities. I was struck by the similarities between him and Eddie and then almost immediately taken aback by the lack of resemblance between him and Dr. Daum.

  I pulled Dr. Daum aside while Eddie and Thad hugged.

  “Your son?” I asked in a low voice.

  “He requested that I keep it a secret at the museum.” He rubbed his finger and thumb back and forth in his eye sockets, massaging away eith
er a tension headache or the dried tears left behind from when he’d first heard the news. I couldn’t tell which, though I suspected both had been present. “Let’s get a cup of coffee. It’s time you heard the story.”

  Dr. Daum and I left Eddie alone to visit with Thad. We followed the directions of a woman behind the reception desk, who advised us to order coffee from the machine in the lobby instead of paying the extra two dollars for a cup from the cafeteria. After emptying the bottom of my handbag for coins, we sat in opposite plastic chairs with a chipped wooden table between us.

  “I adopted Thad when he was a young boy. He was inspired by my life in museum work and chose the same path, but after years of schooling and achieving top honors, he only existed in my shadow.”

  “Why didn’t I know him? You never mentioned him when I volunteered at the museum.”

  “Thad had a hard time of it. A long time ago he learned that being my son didn’t give him instant respect in the eyes of fellow fine arts majors or museum employees. Quite the opposite. Most people thought nepotism was little more than an overly beneficial resume statistic.”

  “Did you get him the job at the museum?”

  “I didn’t even know he was applying there. When he’d started at I-FAD he changed his name to Thad Thomas, keeping his real last name under wraps so people wouldn’t judge him based on his familial connections. He knew I was going to retire, and had planned on that being his time to shine.”

  “Did Christian hire him?”

  “Yes. But Thad hadn’t counted on Christian leveraging Thad’s connections for his own good.”

  Christian Jhanes had been the chair of the fashion marketing curriculum at I-FAD for close to seven years and then left abruptly and moved to the west coast. Only recently, when the newly designated Frowick Gallery had opened, had he returned to Ribbon, in the role of acting director. Though Dr. Daum had started several programs and initiatives after Christian left, when he returned, he undid everything Dr. Daum had carefully achieved over his tenure.

  “Thad expected to shine, but his own efforts were overshadowed by Christian’s demands.”

  “Has Thad said anything about this particular exhibit?”

  “My son has never liked to ask my advice when it comes to matters of art. I think it’s his way of proving his own self-worth. But a few nights ago, he told me Christian had instructed him to take risks to create publicity over this hat exhibit. Thad had happily obliged, thinking it was a chance to prove he was capable of being part of the new risk-taking museum team. He leaked information to the press, changed the opening timetables, and limited the budget. His initial antics were met with resistance from the first consultant—Vera Sarlow. When she left, Christian replaced her with her brother, Dirk Engle. She specifically asked that she never be mentioned in connection to the exhibit. Dirk’s contacts in the collector’s market gave Christian something valuable. It was almost like Christian had planned all along to have Engle be the man behind the exhibit.”

  Or he’d planned all along to do him in, I thought.

  “I got the feeling Dirk Engle didn’t like the way Christian ran the exhibit. I heard them argue the day he was killed. He said he quit,” I said.

  “Dirk demanded to be included in the publicity stunts, and Thad had begrudgingly agreed to do so. The publicity shenanigans worked. A story about Hedy London coming to Ribbon was leaked to the Ribbon Times and picked up by the AP. The museum started getting phone calls to confirm the appearance. Answering the phones became a full-time job. Christian asked me to spend some time at the museum fielding questions. Calls were redirected to Thad and Rebecca too.”

  “But she is coming—I mean, she’s here. I talked to her two days ago.”

  “That was Christian’s doing. He convinced her to participate in the exhibit. I don’t know what he promised her: publicity? Fame? The spotlight?”

  “How come nobody told Eddie any of this?”

  “Eddie was not to be interrupted. He and Dirk had the important task of making the exhibit spectacular, with or without the presence of Hedy London.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “Soon our museum was getting national attention, as was Dirk Engle’s store. If he quit, it might have been because his own store had become something of a hotspot and he wanted out of the exhibit so he could capitalize on the new opportunities, but he was bound by contract.”

  “But he signed a non-compete clause, right? I mean, why would he agree to curate this exhibit if there was nothing in it for him? I can’t figure that out.”

  “Dirk might have had his own agenda all along. We’ll never know.”

  I thought back about what had happened at the museum the day Dirk Engle had been murdered. I’d overheard the argument and he had quit. And then, a light fixture had almost crashed onto my head. The forest green fedora with the knife through it had arrived. Dirk Engle’s body was found behind the admissions desk. And Eddie, having only recently come onboard, was a solid scapegoat.

  And then what? I’d started working for Nick in an attempt to steer clear of the exhibit and ended up smack in the middle of it. The hat designer Milo Delaney snapped at me when I showed up asking questions. Cat had been hat-jacked, Vera had taken possession of her brother’s store’s inventory, and Christian was clearly up to something. Even Rebecca was more in the know than I was.

  I would be willing to bet my next sandwich that Thad had never realized the publicity stunts at the museum were going to escalate to include murder. Of course, he never realized he was going to be stabbed in the process of proving his loyalty, either, which probably put a serious damper on his newfound dedication to the exhibit and to Christian. Nepotism probably now seemed like a small price to pay for a work environment devoid of stabbings.

  According to Dr. Daum, Christian wanted to stall the exhibit until the buzz surrounding it reached cataclysmic proportions. But Tradava, banking on the retail success of the exclusive Hedy London collection, had pressured him to continue. Eddie’s deadlines had come from Tradava, not from Christian.

  My mind swam with details. My suspect list had changed dramatically in the past twenty-four hours, mainly because one of my top suspects was in a hospital with an IV hooked up to his arm. I didn’t know who else I could trust, and I couldn’t reconcile Thad’s stabbing with the missing hats. Vera Sarlow seemed to be a victim of Christian’s publicity machine, and her tears on our first meeting now were understandable, considering her brother had just been found murdered. Or had her tears been because of some kind of overwhelming guilt at having killed her brother?

  Dr. Daum asked me not to mention the attack when we went back to Thad’s room. I smuggled in a bag of mini-pretzels for him, told him not to worry about the exhibit, and went out front to wait in the lobby.

  Eddie stayed at the hospital with Thad. I’d fallen asleep in a chair in the visitor’s lobby and didn’t know that Eddie had made arrangements for my ride home. There was a short list of people Eddie felt comfortable calling close to midnight on a weekday, even if it was only to ask to give me a ride home, and an even shorter list of people who would answer the phone and not ask questions—or at least not ask too many.

  Nick was the one to answer that call.

  I bounced along in the truck next to him, barely able to keep my eyes open. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, which was nice, since I was barely able to connect my thoughts in my head let alone attempt conversation. We pulled into my driveway. He helped me out of the truck and up to the front door, where we stood awkwardly as if it was the end of a first date and we didn’t know if it was the right time to kiss.

  “Nick,” I said, “I’m sorry about yesterday. I’m sorry about today. Things have gotten worse.”

  “Shhhhh.” He leaned in close to me, his face next to my ear, his chest almost resting against mine, his arms encircling me.

  I closed my eyes, absorbing the smell of him—oak and Irish Spring. We were close. I felt his breath against my mouth.


  Screw the job.

  I didn’t like what had happened to us since I started working for him. I’d quit, right after we kissed. I leaned forward and tipped my head up. Our bodies made full contact, and I brushed my lips against his.

  I opened my eyes. His left hand circled around the back of my waist. I didn’t care that we were standing in front of my house, or that Mrs. Nova who lived across the street might be watching us through her curtains. His lips were so soft, so tender, that I wanted him to kiss me again. Only, judging from the expression on his face, he hadn’t kissed me at all.

  I’d kissed Nick and he hadn’t kissed back. How exactly did that figure into our relationship?

  The overwhelming embarrassment of the moment propelled me into a 180-degree turn, so I was facing the front door and he couldn’t see me. I fumbled in my handbag for some kind of distraction and came up with a dry-cleaning ticket.

  Nick’s hands rested on my upper arms. He gently pushed me to the left. His long fingers removed the doorbell placket, and he pulled a hidden key from inside the cubby. He unlocked the front door and held it open. I expected him to leave, but he followed me inside.

  “Kidd, you’re exhausted.”

  “I’m not exhausted. I’m hungry. And I’m angry. I’m hungry and angry, and confused. And hungry.”

  I opened random cabinets, looking for something to eat.

  He crossed his arms over his chest and watched me. “Everything’s going to be okay, Kidd.”

  “No it’s not, Nick! It’s not. Am I your girlfriend, or am I your office assistant? I’m doing a pretty poor job of both. You didn’t thank me for the work I finished, and you didn’t kiss me out front. So I don’t know. I don’t know! What am I?”

  “You’re hungry, you’re angry, and you’re confused. And you’re exhausted. You need to get some sleep.”

  He crossed the room to me and pushed my hair off of my face. He leaned in and kissed my forehead. It would have been intimate if it hadn’t followed up our sad one-sided kiss out front. I looked away and concentrated on fire-starting the pile of Tradava catalogs that sat on the corner of kitchen counter. It didn’t work.