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

by Diane Vallere

  “The files are gone?” she asked.

  “Empty.” I let the word hang in the air for a few seconds, hoping it would sink in. “Nancie, when did you first meet up with Tahoma Hunt?”

  “Tahoma? I’ve known him for years. Why?”

  “A few days ago I found him in your office. He said he was waiting for you, but I didn’t believe him. And he was just here, out front. Today. He said he thought I misunderstood why he was at your office, and I accused him of trying to steal the bible.”

  “Did he deny it?”

  “Not exactly. He said that you were home sick and that you sent him to our offices to get it.”

  “I did ask Tahoma to get the bible for me. I was out meeting prospective advertisers and I thought if I could illustrate what we were trying to do, I’d have a better chance of convincing them.”

  “Why didn’t Tahoma tell me that?”

  “Tahoma has a sketchy history. He’s been accused of burglary, illegal entry, and theft of historical artifacts.”

  “He wasn’t just accused, he was tried and convicted.”

  “He never fought the charges. His father is very well respected in their Native American community, and after his last parole was granted, he chose to leave Utah so as not to bring shame on his family. He was raised with a lot of pride. If he thought you suspected him of theft, he would not have tried to deny it. He would have walked away.”

  I was silent. In the past few years, I’d been accused of behavior that I wasn’t proud of, and I’d gone to extreme lengths to prove I was innocent. So which one of us was right? The person who fought to prove themselves, or the person who was so secure in who they were that they didn’t feel the need to prove anything?

  “Does Bethany House know they hired a felon?”

  “Elements of the Native American culture seeped into the world of fashion a long time ago. Tahoma’s background served to demonstrate how passionate he is about protecting that culture. He worked for years as the curator of Indian Art at a small museum downtown. Bethany House recruited him, not the other way around.”

  Before I could stop it, an image of Cher from the Half Breed days flashed into my head, but was quickly replaced by the memory of Navajo, Jennie Mae’s white cat, wearing the turquoise and red beaded choker. What would Tahoma say about that?

  “Does Tahoma know you’re here?”

  “I doubt it. The last time we spoke was when I asked him to get the bible.” She shifted her weight and rested the side of her head against a dresser. “Sam, where’s the bible now?”

  I pictured the bible, hidden behind the box of Bran Flakes in the pantry of my kitchen. Considering Detective Loncar’s preference for fast food takeout, I figured it was in no harm of being discovered. “It’s safe.”

  “Two years,” she said softly. “Two years of research, files, notes on collectors, contacts with aging designers and the seamstresses who worked in their ateliers. It’s really gone?”

  The answer was yes, but I didn’t say it out loud. I was too busy thinking about what Nancie had said. Those files had been stolen for a reason. Tahoma had been in Nancie’s office. And he’d been here at the Bethany House, the very location where Nancie had been—and I was currently—being detained. Nancie hadn’t known that I was coming; she couldn’t have told him to meet me here. I didn’t know what he was after, but I wasn’t yet willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The Retrofit files documented more than just the history of fashion and someone was risking an awful lot to find out what.

  I settled in on the floor. “Tell me about how you advertised this job,” I said.

  “Just like I advertised for our other interns. The rest of my candidates were college kids from the Institute, students who wanted experience in fashion or in journalism. Kids like our receptionist. They could give me a couple of hours each week between their classes and homework in exchange for college credit.”

  New York City had FIT and Parsons The New School of Design. California had FIDM. We had I-FAD. The Institute of Fashion, Art, and Design. Nick had attended there, as had his maybe-former girlfriend, Amanda Ries. Most of the buyers at Tradava had graduated from there as well. It was well known, highly respected, and the go-to place for up and comers.

  “The guy you hired—how did you find him?” By silent agreement we chose not to call him by name. It would have been easier if we had, though no doubt karmically insulting to the real Pritchard Smith who, I suspected, had been reduced to a skull in a hobo bag.

  “He called to find out if I’d filled the position, and when I told him I hadn’t, he set up an appointment to meet in person.”

  “At Retrofit?”

  “Yes. We hit it off immediately. He knew so much more than the college students did. When I asked him about that, he said he grew up around fashion. He said a friend of the family was a pattern maker for several designers and had one of the most comprehensive collections of samples in the world.”

  I shivered. I knew of only one woman who could claim that same thing. Jennie Mae Tome. But she’d told me that she and the real Pritchard Smith hadn’t had children. “We spent two hours talking about Halston. I told him my idea to do a print magazine to supplement what we did online. He was very interested in the concept and I got caught up in his enthusiasm. I showed him the mocked up bible so he could see my vision.”

  “You showed him the bible before he agreed to work for free?”

  “He knew the job was a non-paying job. I told him that I was sorry that I didn’t have more of a budget because he’d obviously be an asset to Retrofit, but that we were only turning enough of a profit to employ you and me.”

  I got the impression that at that moment, she regretted having me on the payroll. I didn’t ask her to confirm or deny that fact.

  “He said he completely understood that I was offering an unpaid position and that his situation was such that he didn’t have to worry about income. He did ask that I kept that bit confidential and not tell you, otherwise it would change the way you treated him.”

  “Did you tell him anything specific about me?”

  “He asked if there was anything he should know about you to ensure that you worked well together. I told him about your background at Bentley’s and how you moved to Ribbon two years ago to buy the house you grew up in. He seemed to think that meant you were a small town girl, but I set him straight.”

  “How?”

  “I said you were something of a local celebrity and told him about the arsons, the hat exhibit, and the knockoff ring. He was the most impressed when I told him that you were the one who took down Patrick’s killer.”

  Patrick, a one-name celebrity in the worlds of fashion and design, had been largely responsible for pushing me over the edge of thinking about changing my life and actually doing so. Over the weeks after I met him in the parking lot outside of Tradava, through a stream of unconventional interviews in parking lots and restaurants but never in his office, I came to see him as someone who could mentor me into a new chapter of my life. But before I’d had the chance to officially work in his employ, he’d been murdered.

  So Pritchard knew all about my background when we met. “Did you tell him anything else?”

  “Nothing important. He asked the kind of questions you might want to know about your coworker but would be afraid to ask. Were you in a relationship? Did you live far from the office? Were you a cat or a dog person? He said those were the real questions. I thought it was charming.”

  Not. Definitely not charming. Not at all.

  I sat back against the wall. My pantyhose had run in four different places and I’d torn my blazer. I took it off, balled it up and wedged it behind my head. I leaned back against the wall. I undid the bow at the neckline of my blouse and unbuttoned a couple of buttons. It was warm. If they were treating Nancie like it was the Four Seasons, why not turn on the A/C?

  I stood up and kicked off my shoes, then wandered around the basement in my stockings. The cool concrete felt goo
d under my feet. I had to move three racks of clothes out of the way before I found what I was looking for. The air conditioning vent, two feet over my head. No air came out of it.

  “Are you warm?” I asked Nancie.

  “Not right now. The temperature comes and goes, and sometimes it gets a little chilly. Why?”

  “Because I think I know how to get out of here.”

  I looked around for something to stand on. The room was filled with racks and clothing, but nothing else. Even if Nancie hadn’t been tied up on the floor, she probably would have found that corner to be the most comfortable spot in the room.

  “Can you give me a hand over here?” I asked.

  “Sure.” She joined me under the AC vent. “I bet it’s set to go on when the place reaches a certain temperature. I have mine set like that at home.”

  “Do you remember the last time it was cold?”

  “It was a couple of hours ago, I think. I snuggled under a pile of fake fur coats and took a nap. When I woke up, my lunch was here.”

  “That’s how they’re doing it. There must be something in the AC that makes you fall asleep. So the AC kicks on, you fall asleep, they come in and check on you and leave you food. The only thing I can’t figure out is how they manage to not affect the rest of the building?”

  “Sam, that’s crazy. Do you hear what you’re saying?”

  “Nancie, look around. You are in the basement of an auction house, surrounded by the private collections of some of the wealthiest people in the Tristate area. What part of this isn’t crazy?”

  She scanned the room. “If I were a size two, this would have been the greatest couple of days of my life.”

  I’d always suspected that fashion people had a distorted connection between size and quality of life.

  I reached up and grabbed the grid in front of the vent. A few shakes, and it came loose. I handed it to her. “The receptionist led me down here. She said it was close to closing time.” A low rumble started deep inside the vent. I held my hand up to the grate and felt the beginning of a cool breeze. “If I’m right about the AC, then we don’t have a lot of time. I’m going to try to go through the vent and get us help.”

  “This is how you get involved in those situations, isn’t it?”

  “Nancie, this is not me getting involved in a situation. This is me trying to save our lives. Neither one of us knows exactly what is going on here. The only thing I know is that the person behind all this doesn’t seem to shy away from violence. This is not the time to judge me.”

  “Judge you? I was about to give you a raise.”

  Cool air tricked out of the vent. “Give me a boost instead,” I said.

  Nancie threaded her fingers together and I stepped onto her palms and then up into the air conditioning shaft. It was more narrow than I would have liked. For a moment, I wished I was wearing one of my new poly-cotton sweat suits.

  The walls of the shaft were anodized aluminum. The surface was cold to the touch. I tied my scarf around my mouth bandito-style to filter the air and crawled on my hands and knees, making slow progress. I felt increasingly tired and dizzy as I progressed through the vent. I hoped that whatever direction I was headed in, it was the right one. The vent turned a corner, and then another one, and then there was a slight decline. I couldn’t shift or sit, so I continued. If not for the icy cold aluminum against my skin, I would have closed my eyes and fallen asleep. Eventually, I came to a stop with a view of the lobby through a dirty white plastic grid.

  The vent was ten feet above the ground. It seemed I was destined to hang from impossible heights. Worse, I’d have to knock the plastic grid out in order to jump, and once I came out, I wouldn’t be able to reach the vent to replace it. Anybody who entered Bethany House would know that I’d gotten out. Which meant I’d have to get Nancie out too.

  I pressed my face to the plastic grid and gulped at air from the lobby. I felt the haze in my mind clear up slightly. I smacked at the plastic until one corner popped out of the frame, then the second. A third whack and it swung out like a microwave door. I threaded my scarf through the slats on the plastic, flipped over so I was on my back, fed the top half of my body through the opening, and slowly climbed out. As soon as my full weight was on the A/C screen, it snapped away from the wall and sent me tumbling to the ground. My blouse tore at the shoulder, and I was pretty sure I’d have a nasty bruise from where I landed.

  I pulled myself up using the corner of the desk. I grabbed the phone and called my home number. Loncar answered. “Send a team to Bethany House in Sanatoga,” I said. “They’ve been pumping something into the AC and holding a woman in the subbasement. I can get her out but you’ll find the evidence you need for when she presses charges.” I hung up and stared at the calendar on the desk. There were reminders of auctions and notes for appointments to look at various collections.

  And then I saw something that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody but me.

  Dentist 9:00 p.m. Listed underneath the reminder was the address where I’d been meeting my source.

  Chapter 24

  STILL MONDAY NIGHT

  It was a thin connection. Thinner than gauze backstage at a Cher concert. But considering I’d never heard of a dentist who kept office hours at nine o’clock at night, I didn’t believe it was a coincidence.

  I opened and shut several drawers before coming across a janitorial key ring and a pair of industrial scissors. I ran to the elevator and flipped through keys until I found one that fit the control panel. I turned it half a turn and pressed the button for the subbasement. The elevator car descended and then came to a stop. I took a deep breath and held it.

  The doors opened to darkness. I removed one of my chunky heeled shoes and wedged it between the elevator doors to keep them from closing, stepped into the darkness, and hollered for Nancie. A few moments later she called back, her voice weak. I felt my way to her and cut through the rope, and then pulled her to her feet. We stumbled to the elevator. I kicked my shoe out of place and depressed the button for the first floor. My lungs were convulsing with the need for a fresh breath. Nancie remained quiet. When the elevator reached the main floor, I pulled her along behind me. We didn’t stick around to talk to the police.

  Against my better judgment, I drove Nancie to her apartment. She lived in the upscale units across the street from the Vanity Fair outlets, popular with the single, professional crowd. I declined her invitation to come in for a drink and suggested that she pack a bag and get out of town for a few days. Nancie didn’t have family obligations keeping her in town, which probably explained how she’d gone missing for several days and nobody but me had noticed. She looked like she still didn’t quite believe that I wasn’t playacting. I wrote two numbers on the pad by her phone: my untraceable cell and Detective Loncar’s direct line.

  “Nancie, you need to call Detective Loncar and tell him what happened. Once he gets your statement, you need to consider getting out of town. There has to be some place you’ve always wanted to go. Now’s a good time to take a spontaneous vacation.”

  She looked at the phone numbers. “Will the police help me get Retrofit back?”

  “I don’t think that’s their priority,” I said softly. I put my hand on her arm. “But when this is over, I’ll help you.” Retrofit had been my most recent job, but it had been her lifelong dream. I didn’t know how else to console her.

  After leaving Nancie’s house, I drove in circles, trying to figure out my next move. I was a little smarter than I’d been twenty-four hours ago, but not much. I needed a computer and I knew where I could find one.

  I drove to the vacant Retrofit offices. The Office For Rent signs were still on the doors and a bunch of colorful flyers and coupons were stuck between them. The lights were out. I pulled my keys out of my bag and entered. The last time I’d been here was the day I saw that the offices had been emptied. I didn’t know if I was being watched or not. That thought alone kept me on edge.

  It’s a well
known fact in fashion that if you dress the part—any part—people will treat you as if you belong. Appearances matter. The vacant Retrofit offices were just like a nobody who’s employed the help of a stylist to dress the part. This emptied out office with For Rent signs on the windows was an illusion. The outside world had been led to believe, based on the way the offices looked, that Nancie had closed her doors. But it wasn’t real.

  The offices had been dressed to look like it had been abandoned. I pieced together what I knew, established a timeline in my mind. Once Nancie had been hidden away in the basement of Bethany House, someone had made it look like she’d skipped town. She hadn’t been the one to remove all evidence of the magazine’s daily business. The appearance of an abandoned business would only throw suspicion on her in the long run. I doubted the rental company had been notified.

  I doubted any of the companies who provided power, water, and trash had been notified. Whoever had cleaned out the files, shut off the lights, and taped signs to the front doors, had wanted people to think we’d gone belly up. I was guessing it was all about appearances. If I was right, the power, the water, and the internet would still work. I went to the breaker panel and flipped several switches.

  I was right.

  I sat in the dark at my desk, not wanting to leave signs of my presence. Pritchard’s message to me, leaving my own cubicle intact, had been his mistake. I remembered the notation I’d found on the calendar at Bethany House. If someone was meeting my source at the dentist’s office at nine, I intended to be there.

  Now I had to do something about my outfit.

  I called Cat Lestes, the owner of Catnip, an off-price designer outlet that I frequented on occasion. She kept my measurements, preferences, and credit card info on hand for fashion emergencies, and seeing as I had a torn vintage blouse and only one shoe, the emergency sirens were on high alert.

  “Hi Cat, this is Samantha. I need your help.”

  Cat was somewhat accustomed to me starting conversations like this and didn’t miss a beat. “Sam, you will not believe what came in today. Dead stock from a denim company. Hi-waisted Calvins like Brooke Shields advertised. Remember them? You had to lay on the bed to zip them up? There’s garbage bags full of them. I think they’ve been sitting in a warehouse since 1981.” She laughed. “I’m thinking of having them used to recover the sofa and chairs outside of the fitting rooms. Now, what’s the occasion?”