Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5)

by Diane Vallere

  “Tell me about Retrofit.”

  “It’s a start-up fashion magazine. Internet only, at least at first.”

  “There are people who read this?”

  “Fashion is big business,” I said. “How long have you known me?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “I’ve been back in Ribbon for two years and in that time I’ve worked for two department stores, a museum exhibit, and a runway show. All of which ended poorly. You told me once that you knew crime was on the rise in Ribbon when you took this job. Like it or not, the fashion industry is part of our city. There are factories here that designers can use. There are warehouses available for cheap. We’re a train ride away from New York City and a lot of people who work in the industry commute because the cost of living here is more reasonable.”

  “Bringing new business to Ribbon should be a good thing, not an excuse for illegal behavior.”

  “You’re missing my point. Fashion is big business and it’s a glamorous business. It draws all kinds of people, including the ones who see it as a way to get rich or get famous. Look closely at all of the crimes that I’ve been involved with. There’s a pattern there. Something is happening in our city and it’s attracting the wrong people.”

  “This new job of yours. Retrofit. Why’d your boss set up shop here?”

  “Same reason. You can run an online magazine from anywhere. We’re close enough to New York that we can make a trip to photograph designer samples or wander Manhattan to catch up on street style.”

  “But your website has to do with old fashion.”

  “That’s right. Nancie came up with a niche target: repurposing vintage pieces into current styles. We were ranked in the top twenty-five up-and-coming style websites last month.”

  “Tell me about this project.”

  Detective Loncar was a master of interrogation. The first time we’d been alone in a Q&A type situation, I’d tried my hand at keeping my mouth shut. When that failed, I’d moved on to selective truths. Eventually, he’d found a way to win my trust and I’d spilled the beans. His expertise lay in his minimal conversational approach. If he’d gone into Freudian psychoanalysis instead of police work, I suspected he’d ask me to tell him about my mother.

  I reached into my bag and pulled out the Retrofit Seventies bible. I set it next to Loncar’s plate and tapped the cover. “This is a mock up of what we’ve been working on. Nancie made this. She’s been selling ad space to fund it, and she asked Pritchard and I to find interesting content for our editorials.”

  “What about your boss? What does she say about all of this?”

  “I haven’t seen Nancie in days.”

  “You find that suspicious?”

  “She said she had meetings with advertisers around the clock.” I hadn’t given much thought to Nancie, but Loncar had brought up an interesting question. Nancie had been MIA since before the theft. If I was so certain that there was a connection between the Seventies project and the theft, what made me think she wasn’t involved?

  Chapter 11

  FRIDAY, EARLY EVENING

  “Ms. Kidd, I want you to walk away from this project,” Loncar said.

  “With all due respect, this is ‘project’ is my job. It’s the first real job I’ve had since moving to Ribbon. It’s not like I haven’t been trying, either. You have no idea how hard it is for a former fashion buyer to find work these days.”

  “You could always move back to New York City,” he said.

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “It would sure make my life easier.”

  We both stood. Around us, a team of busboys in white aprons cleared the empty tables. I adjusted the hem of my sweatshirt and looked at Loncar. “Thank you for listening to me.”

  “Ms. Kidd, it’s my job to listen to you. Anybody else and I’d give the info to one of my rookies and have them follow up with a few phone calls to try to locate this Mr. Smith. But you have a track record, so I’m going to follow up on this myself.”

  Implied but not said (by him): I sure hope this isn’t some kind of a joke.

  Not said but thought (by me): I really wish it was.

  We went our separate ways: Loncar to the door marked Stairs and me past the front desk and out to the parking lot. The dead taxi was parked at the edge of the lot under the sign advertising room rates. $39.99 Internet special, includes HBO and Breakfast Buffet. No wonder the detective hadn’t checked himself into the Westin.

  I drove to my house, parked the dead taxi in the driveway, and went inside. The first thing I did was find a suitable hiding place for the Retrofit bible. (I stuck it in the pantry behind the Bran Flakes.) Next, I finished the second half of my hoagie and most of a bag of potato chips and then changed from my sweats into a cream ribbed poor boy sweater, long, rust suede maxi skirt, and a cropped brown and rust paisley vest trimmed with an elaborate silk cord that knotted in the front. I took the Phillies baseball hat off, scrunched some mousse into the ends of my hair, and pulled on a crocheted cap like the one Allie MacGraw wore in Love Story. There were times to lay low and there were times to be seen. This was a time to be seen. I finished off the rest of the potato chips and then got into my car. I let the car idle for a moment while I dug around in my bag for my cell phone. I called Eddie.

  “Yo,” I said. “How’s Logan?”

  “Hello to you, too. I don’t know what you’ve been feeding your cat, but he’s been making good use of that litter box.”

  “Did he poop out anything interesting?” I asked.

  “Dude.”

  “The vet said the only way he’s going to feel better is if whatever he ate isn’t in there anymore. Maybe he ate something he shouldn’t have?”

  “I love your cat, but I’m not going to go through his poop.”

  “Point taken. But does he seem peppier?”

  “He should be. He’s gotta be a couple pounds lighter by now. Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you?”

  “Not yet. Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you?”

  “Dude, you’re the one who handed over your cat and told me not to contact you.”

  “Yes, but you’re the one who downed two thousand calories before lunch. Now ask yourself: which one of us is acting more out of character?”

  “I’d say it’s a toss-up.”

  I put the car into reverse. “Call me if anything happens and give Logan a kiss for me. Right on top of his head between his ears. And tell him that I’ll pick him up as soon as I can.”

  “I don’t think he minds it here so much. I put Cat Scratch Fever on repeat this afternoon, and tonight we’re watching Val Lewton’s The Cat People.”

  “I think maybe when this is all over you should get your own cat.”

  Another call beeped through. I pulled the phone away from my head and checked the display. It was Nick. I hadn’t called him back after his “if you want to” message. I wanted to, no doubt about that, but I was afraid to pull him into this. I let the call go to voicemail and felt only marginally guilty.

  I said goodbye to Eddie and left my driveway. Traffic was lunch-hour heavy, and it was hard to tell if it was my imagination or an actual fact that someone had followed me. I drove to the strip mall where Nick’s studio was located and cruised past, but didn’t stop. I spent five minutes in an automatic car wash at the corner of the parking lot, and then patronized the Dairy Queen drive-thru and treated myself to a vanilla shake. If Pritchard was following me, he’d see me doing all of the things I usually did. I wanted him to believe everything was exactly the same.

  I drove with my milkshake to the parking lot out front of Retrofit, finished the shake, and then got out and pretended to fuss with something in my trunk. After about a minute, I shut the trunk and headed inside, as much for appearances sake as for my own personal agenda.

  The front doors were locked. I let myself in and went past the lobby to my cubicle. It looked just like it had yesterday. No daggers in the middl
e of my desk. No threatening messages written on my cabinets. My laptop docking station sat empty like I’d left it. But despite the appearance of normalcy, there was an eerie sense of quiet in the building. I set my handbag down on my desk chair and went down the hallway to Nancie’s office. The portable wall dividers were slightly crooked, but that wasn’t what alerted me that something was wrong. It wasn’t until I reached her doorway that I saw what caused my sense of alarm.

  Unlike my office, that appeared to be in much the same state that I’d left it in, Nancie’s was the polar opposite. It was empty.

  File cabinets had been yanked open, their drawers cleared of information. Closet doors hung wide, showcasing bare shelves. The laptop, docking station, mouse pad, and wireless keyboard, all gone. Even the waste paper basket had been cleaned out.

  I left Nancie’s office and checked the boardroom, the coffee corner, and the supply closet. By the time I came to Pritchard’s cubicle, I wasn’t surprised by what I saw. It was empty, just like everything else.

  Despite the fact that my office had remained intact, it appeared as though Retrofit had left the building.

  Chapter 12

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  I returned to Nancie’s office and double checked the cabinets. All signs that this office had recently been in use were gone. Even the carpet had been vacuumed. What had caused her to leave? My note? Or something more ominous? Had she been threatened, too? Or had she befallen an even worse fate than threats?

  Or maybe it hadn’t been fear that chased Nancie out of the office but a need to disappear.

  Four months of working with Nancie had put her outside the scope of my suspicions, but she could have been the one on the other end of Pritchard’s phone call. I’d seen her level of dedication when it came to the success of Retrofit, and I’d experienced her drive in the face of the challenges of growth. Another person might have been happy with our accomplishments in such a limited time. But Nancie wanted more. The idea of the magalog had come from left field.

  She’d been so gung-ho about bringing Pritchard on board and had cautioned me to stay put in the office while he did his thing in the field. Maybe they were working together. I’d bought into Nancie’s passion about Retrofit when I first came to work with her and I didn’t want to believe that she had a hidden agenda, but to ignore the possibility in light of the ransacked office and the theft at Jennie Mae Tome’s house felt obtuse. I backed out of the office slowly. When I’d entered, I hadn’t paid much attention to the clean desks out front that the interns used. They’d been taught to clear them each night, and the revolving door of unpaid help kept anybody from making their space overly personal. In fact, I remember Nancie instructing a few of the college students to respect the fact that the desk was only theirs for the time that they occupied it.

  But someone had gutted us of our files. Who? And why had they left my cubicle untouched? If it meant something, I didn’t know what. Except that whoever had cleared out the Retrofit offices had gotten away with everything—everything but the bible that I’d taken the day Tahoma was there. Aside from my office, the interior was as empty as Jennie Mae Tome’s attic. Whoever was responsible had expected me to come back and find it like this. They’d been watching me.

  They were probably watching me right now.

  Any instinct to make myself visible vanished. I grabbed my handbag from my office and ran out the front door to my car. I left rubber tire tracks in the parking lot in my haste to get out of there.

  New plan: be invisible all the time.

  I pulled the car into my garage and slammed the door down behind it. I found a half empty can of spray paint on the work bench and sprayed it over the glass panes of the mechanical garage door, blacking them out from the inside. My hands shook and the paint splattered on the inside of the door, leaving graffiti-like fuzz and, where I’d had a heavy hand, drips that looked like thick, black tears. The chemicals caused my eyes to water, mimicking the paint that ran down the inside of the door.

  I went inside the house. Minus one pudgy black cat, the whole of it felt too big, too empty, too much. I pulled the living room curtains shut and clipped them closed with binder clips. I followed with the drapes in the kitchen and the blinds by the back door. As I made my way upstairs, I peeled off the crocheted hat, the vest, the cream-colored sweater, and the rust suede maxi skirt, leaving them in a trail to the bedroom. I tore the tags off the navy poly-blend sweatshirt and pants, put on the baseball hat, pulled my hair through the loop in the back and tied on a pair of Converse sneakers. I put my wallet, phone, lipstick, keys, and laptop into a Tradava shopping bag and left.

  This morning, I’d wanted to be seen. Samantha Kidd, fashionista, girl about town. Now, I wanted to go unnoticed. I was dressed like a bag lady, and I knew there was one place where I could work without interruption, one place where nobody would think twice about my appearance. I drove the dead taxi to the library.

  On my way there, my cell phone rang. Another call from Nick. I was still shaking from the encounter at Retrofit and, despite my efforts to keep him out of danger, I wanted to hear his voice. I answered the call and put it on speaker so I could drive.

  “Nick, hi. Sorry I haven’t called you back. Work’s been busy.”

  “You’re working?”

  “Yes. Nancie has me buried in the Seventies. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve learned. Did you know a blue leisure suit with white belt and shoes was called a Full Cleveland?”

  “Did I see your car at the Dairy Queen earlier today?”

  “You did. I needed a quick pick me up. Sorry I didn’t come to your store to say hello, but like I said, she’s got me working around the clock. I know you said something about us getting together, but I don’t think you should count on seeing me for awhile.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Is this about my dad?” he finally asked.

  “Your dad?” I repeated. “No.” Did Nick think I was superficial enough that I couldn’t handle him moving in with his dad while his dad recovered? Could I live with that in order to protect him? It was a small price to pay. “I mean, not really. It’s going to take me a little time to adjust, that’s all. You two should spend some time together, get to know each other.” I took a quick hard left to throw off anybody who might be following me and then swerved into the next lane. A car horn beeped and my phone slid from my thigh to the floor mat of the passenger side.

  Nick’s voice came out tinny and faraway. “Kidd, he’s my dad. I already know him. And if his heart attack taught me anything, it’s that life is short. I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to start reacquainting myself with you.”

  I wanted it too, but I couldn’t risk his safety. I leaned toward the phone and raised my voice so it would carry. “I’m sorry, Nick. I’m on my way to the library to research some stuff for work. If I finish up early, I’ll call you, but I think it’s going to be a long night.” The light in front of me turned yellow and I slowed and then stopped. I ducked down and swatted at my phone until my fingertips connected. I pulled the phone closer until I was able to pick it up and put it in the cup holder. The light changed and I pulled forward. “Hello?” I said. “Are you still there?”

  It had taken Nick and me months of repair work to make up for the hurt over our break-up. Hours of phone conversations where we said nothing but somehow communicated everything that needed to be shared. Gradually, the pain had faded. And now here I was willingly making myself look bad. Distancing myself from what could be.

  Reason #7: Snooping on your coworkers can lead to complications in your love life.

  Except that a very small part of me wondered why Nick was pushing for this now? The last few months had been sweet. Between his business and his father, his hands had been full. The last thing I would have thought he’d want was to ratchet up the romance factor between us.

  “Don’t work too hard,” he said. “Call me if you finish early.”

  I tried to think of something to say but came up short.
A few seconds passed, and the screen indicated that the call had dropped. I punched the steering wheel and the horn sounded. The driver in front of me rolled down his window and gave me the finger. I hollered back at him even though he’d done nothing wrong.

  Good times.

  I arrived at the library and circled the block three times until a parking space opened up. I ignored every impulse that told me to call Nick back and do damage control and forced myself to go inside. The sooner I figured out what Pritchard was up to, the sooner everything could get back to normal.

  Despite the relatively safe feeling of the library, I still looked to my left and right before approaching the front desk. I felt watched, vulnerable. The librarian barely looked up at me when I approached. “I’d like to reserve a computer,” I said. I handed her my library card. “Preferably one in the back.”

  She punched a few buttons on the keyboard. “Second floor, by the restroom. Here’s your password. There’s a one-hour time limit. If you want more time, come back to me and we’ll do this all over again.”

  My cell phone made a noise for an incoming text. She looked at it. “No cell phones allowed. Turn it off or you’ll have to leave.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I switched the ringer to silent and headed off to my temporary office.

  It took a few minutes to figure out the library’s search system and access the online databases that cross referenced articles from newspapers and magazines. In the past I’d had to locate issues of magazines and hunt them down on the shelves of the library archives. Since then, most periodicals had been digitized and I could find whatever I needed from the relative comfort of the plastic library chair. No wonder they enforced a one-hour limit.

  The first person I looked up was Jennie Mae Tome. She and her walk-in closet seemed to fit all too well with the project at Retrofit. She was as good a place to start my research as any.