Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) (2 page)

“Sam, this is Pritchard Smith. He’s joining the
Retrofit
team. He comes with a long list of contacts in the industry, just like you.”

“It’s Samantha,” I corrected.

I knew the reasons my employment history had brought me to
Retrofit
: my degree in the history of fashion, coupled with nine years as a buyer and then two as a mostly unemployed job seeker. My mentor in New York had told me about this opportunity and I’d out-interviewed at least a dozen fashion bloggers to get it. Nancie and I spent long hours working to ensure
Retrofit
’s success. Pritchard’s interest in a relatively small start-up might be a sign that we’d done something right and were poised for expansion.

I looked at Pritchard. He crossed his arms and studied me. A half smile pulled at the left corner of his mouth and I wondered if there was something else that brought him to our door.

Nancie picked up a two-inch thick spiral bound notebook from the table. She looked lovingly at the cover, and then turned it around and pushed it in front of me. It was about nine inches by twelve and on the bottom right hand corner a sticker had been placed that said
Retrofit
Trend Magazine, Vol. 1. I started to open it, but Nancy put her hand on top and kept it closed.

“That’s my baby. My dream. I’ve been working on it since before you came on board. From the first day we started the e-zine,
Retrofit
has been about focusing on previous decades and teaching people how to understand the evolution of style. This is going to work in tandem with what we’ve already built. Two issues a year. Comprehensive style tips, history, tutorials, and anything else we can brainstorm. Each issue will focus on a different decade.”

“Isn’t that what we do now?” I asked.

“We’ll do it times a thousand. We’ll go back in time and highlight the designers who influenced that decade, give brief histories. Publish never before seen runway photos, collection sketches, anything we can get our hands on. Find the designers to whom they’ve passed the torch. We’ll highlight individual trends and provide how to guides on styling vintage clothes while staying modern. Mix and match. Create a look with a knowledge of fashion history.”

“That sounds pretty amazing, but—”

She continued. “Every page of the premiere issue has been laid out. Editorial. Fads. Accessory highlights. Sidebars. It’s all there.” She tapped the top of the spiral bound notebook. “The only thing we need is the actual content.”

I had a sneaking suspicion where Nancie was planning on getting content. I looked at Pritchard. He confirmed my suspicion with a smug smile.

Nancie tapped the notebook again. “I want you and Pritchard to put your heads together and come up with concepts. We’re not going to do the whole ‘what’s hot/what’s not’ thing most magazines do. Instead of telling people their horoscopes, we’re going to show people how to
dress
for their horoscope. I want to teach women how to discover their own personal style by showing them the icons who changed the way we see clothes today.”

“Go retro,” I said.

“That’s it! How to go retro and find the fit that flatters you. Build a look from the inside out. Are you taking notes? You should be taking notes.”

“I don’t have a pen,” I said.

Pritchard reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a sleek silver ball point pen. “Take mine.”

“See? Already working together. Perfection!”

Reluctantly, I accepted it. The pen had a nice weight. I clicked it up and down twice, made loopy circles on a blank sheet of paper that Nancie thrust in front of me, and then turned the circles into a giant flower doodle. Next to it, I wrote
New Retrofit project.

Nancie turned her spiral bound notebook around so it faced me. She picked up the corner of the cover and opened it. Inside was one line:
Retrofit
: the Seventies.

The Seventies?

“The Seventies have been having a moment for years. We’d be foolish not to get on the bandwagon. Mock something up while I’m out selling ad space. Once we layout your concept, you can start contacting designers, pulling samples, and setting up the shoot. Bethany House has agreed to give us unrestricted access to their archives. It’s going to take a real commitment on your end, Sam. I know this is a bit more than you signed up for, so back to my question. Are you in or are you out?”

This time I didn’t look at Pritchard. I didn’t have to. For the first time since I’d left my high profile job as senior buyer of ladies designer shoes at Bentley’s New York almost two years ago, I could pay my bills. I’d weathered a storm of personal danger with more close calls than I wanted to count. For the first time in those two years, I had a fully stocked pantry and a regular schedule for the dry cleaning. I had enough left over after paying my bills to buy new shoes. And just last week I’d bought a two hundred dollar luxury cat condo for Logan. I wasn’t about to give it all up.

“I’m in,” I said.

Nancie glowed. “My power team—perfection!” She tapped my hand. “Now, go home and get some rest. We’re going to attack this first thing in the morning.”

And that’s how it happened that I jumped into the deep end of Seventies fashion.

The story of how I ended up hanging from the side of a building is a little more complicated.

Chapter 2

WEDNESDAY
MORNING

The morning after Nancie announced her project, I rose with the sun and put myself into the correct Seventies mindset by dressing in an amber velvet pantsuit with particularly wide lapels. It was only a few seasons old but channeled the proper aesthetic. As in, modern with a hint of groovy. I found a navy blue shawl with chocolate brown fringe on the end and draped it over one shoulder, and then tied the two ends together by my opposite hip. I stepped into brown heels, gave my cat Logan a fresh bowl of food and a kiss on the head, and was out front by the time my carpool arrived. And by carpool, I mean Eddie.

Eddie Adams was the visual director for Tradava, the local department store in Ribbon, Pennsylvania. He was also one of the few people in Ribbon who knew me in high school when I’d lived here the first time. I like to think that he’s my voice of reason, but he’s been known go to a little crazy himself. Mostly, he keeps me in check and accepts my unique wardrobe choices.

On any given day, Eddie was dressed in a version of 80s skateboard dude meets sign painter. Today he had on a Blondie T-shirt and a pair of black Dickies with colorful painted handprints down the front of the legs. I often wondered if he spent his free nights coming up with new and interesting ways to customize the workpants he bought at Sherwin Williams.

“Dude. You’re actually up? And dressed?” He looked behind me. “Is there something going on that I don’t know about?”

I looked behind me, too. Logan had jumped onto the window sill in the living room and watched us. The window was framed with long blue tweed curtains, and Logan’s shiny black fur made a start contrast against it. Perhaps he, too, was curious about my early morning rise.

“New project at
Retrofit
.”

Eddie had not put his VW Bug into reverse. We sat in the driveway, the engine idling. “It’s seven o’clock. You’re never ready by seven. I figured I’d come in and make coffee.”

“Nancie sprung the project on me last night. And there’s a new guy, too. I can already tell he’s the competitive type. I want to get a jump start and make sure he doesn’t try to railroad me into taking the crap jobs.”

“How long were you at the office? Your car was still in the lot when I left Tradava.”

“I left a little after eleven.” I yawned. “I only got about five and a half hours of sleep. Drop me off and then go to the coffee drive thru in the parking lot behind Bowl-O-Rama.” I yawned again.

He put the car into gear and backed up, sighing heavily. Eddie, like the rest of the world, relied heavily on Starbucks and Keurig to provide him with caffeine on demand. Somewhere along the line he’d become enamored of my Mr. Coffee, left behind by my parents when I bought the house from them. He swore it made the best coffee in Ribbon. Under normal circumstances when I took an extra ten minutes deciding on my accessories, it worked out well, as I came downstairs to a freshly brewed pot.

Eddie drove the less-than-a-mile distance to the strip mall. I’d often considered walking to work (not in these shoes) but the distance between thought and action seemed particularly far when it came to anything resembling exercise. While Eddie drove, I filled him in on the assignment.

“I get it now,” he said.

“What?”

“The velvet suit. You don’t wear anything without the proper motivation.”

“I’ll have you know this amber velvet suit is brand new and it’s fabulous.”

“Brand new to you, but more like three years old from a designer discount store,” he said. “You know as well as I do how long it takes designer merchandise to go from the runway to off-price, and I saw that very same suit hanging in Cat’s store last week.”

“I cut the tags off this morning and that should count for something.”

He laughed. “Seventies, huh? Dude, if you don’t watch it you’re going to be knee deep in Evil Knievel jumpsuits and Indian princess headdresses.”

“Not that we’re going to go that direction, but I believe every look from the Seventies had its place. You can make fun of feathers if you want, but you can’t deny that Cher rocked them during the Half Breed years.”

“You don’t get to use Cher to defend every trend of the Seventies. She’s rocked everything she’s ever worn. She’s Cher.” He tore open the package to a cheese Danish with his teeth and made a
puh
sound with his mouth to blow away the piece of plastic wrapper that stuck to his lip. With the hand not driving, he squeezed the bottom of the package to make the Danish pop out the top. “But find me a modern day interpretation of an Evil Knievel studded jumpsuit and I’ll give up coffee for a week.”

I love a challenge as much as the next girl, but nobody wanted to see that.

Eddie pulled up to the curb in front of
Retrofit
and bit into his pastry. At the rate he was going, his cargo pants were going to be tight by the end of the week.

“I’m working on a major installation in the denim department. Probably going to take all night. Do you want to call me when you’re done?”

“Sure. Later.” I hopped out of the Bug and strode inside, ready to start my plan of acing Pritchard Smith.

To the rest of the world,
Retrofit
was like any other storefront in the Ribbon East Shopping Center. We were sandwiched between a vitamin supply store and a Hallmark. The office was narrow and deep. Individual offices had been formed using ten-foot-tall wooden walls on castors. The results were glorified cubicles, glorified because the ten-foot-tall height made it impossible to spy on anybody who occupied the space next to yours. For the past four months, it had been Nancie, myself, and a rotating assortment of interns from the local college, and any curiosity about what someone else was doing was satisfied by a holler into the hallway.

The lobby of
Retrofit
was a makeshift desk where our intern-of-the-month sat across from a low sofa and coffee table where visitors waited. I passed through the doors, down the hall to my desk, mentally prepared to start my new challenge of showing my coworker the meaning of dedication and commitment.

Only, even at 7:15 in the morning, Pritchard had beaten me to the punch.

SK- I’m in the field. See what you can dig up on the internet and we’ll compare notes.—PS

He was “in the field” at seven fifteen in the morning? Doing what? Fashion doesn’t wake up at seven fifteen. Fashion barely rolls out of bed by ten.

“Sam!” Nancie said behind me. “Wow. You and Pritchard must be as excited about this project as I am. Both of you up and at ’em before eight o’clock. Perfection.”

“Where
is
Pritchard?” I asked. “We were supposed to meet this morning but he’s not here.”

“He didn’t say anything about waiting for you.” She shrugged. “He’s at a private residence in Amity. About a half a mile past the old doll museum. He said something about having a rare chance to talk to the owner of a massive vintage wardrobe. I don’t think he mentioned the name. Did he tell you more than that?”

“No, that’s just about all he told me too,” I lied. “I must have misunderstood him when he said where to meet. I better not waste any more time. Don’t want to be the slacker on your Dream Team!” I said, and raced out the front door.

The heels slowed me down, but I caught up with Eddie at the Coffee Drive Thru behind the bowling alley. I yanked the passenger side door open, shifted the massive pile of mini donuts and individually packaged cheese Danishes to my lap, and got in.

“I need a ride to a house in Amity,” I said. “Like, immediately.”

“Dude, I think you sat on my Pop Tarts.”

I felt around under my bottom and pulled out a squashed package. He snatched it from my hand and tossed it onto the back seat. “That was blueberry. My favorite.”

“I’ll buy you a whole box if you step on it.”

He collected his change and his large coffee from the Drive Thru attendant and peeled out of the lot onto Perkiomen Avenue heading east. We’d gone two miles before he asked the obvious question.

“Do I want to know what happened in the past five minutes?”

“This Pritchard Smith guy is trying to make me look bad. We just got the assignment last night—last night! I walked into the office at seven fifteen and he was already gone. And there was a note on my desk. ‘SK—’”

“He addressed the note to ‘SK’?”

“Yes. It’s bad enough that Nancie calls me ‘Sam,’ but SK is worse. I met this guy yesterday. How do you go from, ‘Hi, I’m Samantha Kidd, nice to meet you, happy that we’ll be working together,’ to ‘SK—stay here and work while I visit rich people and peruse their closets’?”

“That’s what the note said?”

“Close enough.”

He laughed. “So, you’re hopped up on the Seventies. What does that have to do with your new best friend?”