Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) (3 page)

“Nancie revealed this big project last night right before we left. We’re going to produce a semi-annual print magazine to accompany the content we feature on the website. The first issue is dedicated to the Seventies.”

“That’s a huge undertaking. Does Nancie know what she’s in for? Once she goes from internet content to print, her expenses are going to go through the roof. Our print catalog at Tradava is about a hundred pages long and it costs us about a thousand dollars a page to produce.”

“That’s how Bentley’s was, too.” Bentley’s New York was the luxury department store where I’d built my career until I’d decided that my life, while glamorous on the surface, wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t miss the long hours or the life-in-a-carry-on during fashion week, but I’d learned to appreciate the industry education I’d received over the nine years I worked there. “We co-opted the page expenses with the designers.”

“If your magalog is dedicated to the Seventies, most of your designers are dead.”

He had a point. “I figured Pritchard, Nancie, and I would brainstorm today and come up with a plan of attack. But noooo. He’s already at some private collector’s house looking at clothes. And he expects me to sit around the office pulling background info. Pull over.”

“What?”

I grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it toward the side of the road. Eddie slammed on the brakes. The air filled with the scent of rubber that melted into the road.
“Never
grab the driver,” he said.

“Yes, dad.” I pointed to the driveway entrance on the opposite side of the street. “That’s the address.” He waited for an opening in traffic and then pulled into the long gravel driveway. “Do me a favor? Stick around for a couple of minutes. I’m not sure how well my showing up is going to go over, and truthfully, I don’t even know the person who lives here. There’s a very good chance that I’m not going to be as welcome as I should be.”

“I was going to have a solid hour of alone time in the office before my staff came to work,” he said to himself. “I was going to have a chance to figure out exactly how to design a wall of denim before the phone started ringing. I was going to—”

“Gorge yourself on Danishes and Pop Tarts and donuts without anybody knowing.” I picked up a package of chocolate covered mini donuts and shook it at him. “There’s something up with you because you don’t eat like this. I do. Don’t think we aren’t going to talk about that when we have more time.” I tossed the donuts onto the back seat.

“You make a compelling argument for me wanting to stick around and wait for you.”

“Please?”

“I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”

I blew him a kiss and got out.

The private residence in question was a three story colonial, red brick. I rang the bell twice to no answer. I knocked and the door eased open without the help of someone on the other side.

Curious.

“Pritchard?” I called inside. “Pritchard, it’s Samantha Kidd. Nancie told me where to find you. Are you here?”

The door had opened far enough for me to see the interior of the house. Two cats, a white Persian and a gray and white Scottish fold, sat on the otherwise empty divan in front of me. The Persian jumped down and headed toward me. I blocked the door with my foot. “Hello?” I called again.

No answer.

I turned around and held up a
just a minute
finger to Eddie, and then stepped inside and shut the front door behind me. The fluffy white cat buzzed against my velvet pant leg, leaving behind a coating of cat hair.

The interior layout was remarkably similar to my own house, although the decorating style was more big budget/discerning eye vs. my own visual sale/whimsical-yet-frugal-fashion-person aesthetic. I followed the scent of cigarettes and coffee through the living room, turned to my right and climbed the first two steps of the staircase.

“Pritchard?” I called up. A calico cat poked her head around the corner, and then scampered across the landing above me. Slowly, I scaled the stairs and looked side to side at the various doors that opened onto the landing. No one appeared to be here. I opened the door to my immediate left and climbed a second flight of stairs. In my own house, those stairs led to the third floor attic that my parents had converted into my childhood bedroom. Aside from the creepy factor that came after I’d read
Flowers in the Attic
, I loved it.

But not as much as I loved this room.

The room was about twenty by twenty feet but felt much smaller because it was filled with chrome racks like the kind department stores use to deliver new merchandise to the selling floor every morning. Each rack was packed full of clothing, some partially removed from plastic garment bags. On the floor between the racks were large black trunks with brass hinges and corners. Two trunks were closed but one lay open, exposing a fluffy interior of ecru lace scarves, paisley shawls, and at least four satin dusters trimmed with long piano fringe not unlike the trim on my shawl. Two maple dressers were propped along the wall on either side of a four-foot-tall window that opened out onto what appeared to be a balcony.

What the heck was this place?

I crept closer. Feathers, velvet, beads. Shades of amber like my suit. Mustard yellow, avocado green, chocolate, and teal side by side with paisley prints and batik prints. I recognized a few pieces that I’d seen in the old fashion magazines Nancie kept in the offices for our reference and a quick peek at the labels confirmed that these weren’t knockoffs. They weren’t a few years old. This was the real deal—flared, fringed, and funky. Judging from the condition of the garments and the photos hanging around the top of each hanger, these were samples from fashion shows that had taken place decades earlier.
This
was what Pritchard Smith had come to see without me.

I fingered the silk of a yellow and blue paisley caftan, then ran my open palm over a suede blazer and matching tiered skirt. I’d never gone in much for western, but this was exquisite. I slipped off my shawl and velvet blazer, dropped them on top of the open trunk of scarves, had my right arm halfway into the sleeve of a turquoise silk peasant blouse with hand-painted feathers and Indian beadwork at the neckline and hem when I heard a voice.

“I’m telling you, I heard her call my name.” The voice was unmistakably Pritchard Smith. I froze in place. The turquoise silk peasant blouse slipped from my fingers and landed on the floor. My brain scrambled to find a cover story for why I was there but came up empty. There was a stretch of silence, and then Pritchard spoke again. “I don’t know. But she can’t find out what we know. I risked enough to get here. If she ruins this, I’ll take her out of the equation. ”

Suddenly, I was a whole lot less concerned with finding Prichard Smith. But I was trapped in a room filled with clothes. A fashion time capsule. Hiding in the closet wasn’t an option because the whole room was a closet.

Pritchard’s voice grew nearer. “I’ll know in a minute. Hold on.” The one-sided conversation indicated that he was on the phone, but his choice of words didn’t inspire me to stick around.

In the past two years, I have hidden behind a scrim, behind library shelves, and even—once—in a tree outside of a fashion industry event. But never have I gone out a window, three floors up from the ground.

“All I can tell you is that if she finds out, it’s over.” The hinges on the door below creaked and I sprung into action.

There’s a first time for everything.

Chapter 3

WEDNESDAY
,
MID
-
MORNING

I scooped my clothes and shoved them into my oversized hobo bag, threw the strap over my shoulder, and ran for the window. Truth be told, I’d hoped for a balcony. What I got was barely a ledge. I went through the open window. By the time Pritchard had reached the room, I was dangling by a shutter. Which brings us to reason #1 why spying on my coworker was a bad idea: Spying leads to impulsive exit strategies, and impulsive exit strategies rarely work out well.

My fingers curled through the bottom slats of the shutter and I strained to hear the voices in the room. “She’s not here.” Pause. “No, I’m not going to calm down. Do you not realize what’s at stake?” Pritchard cursed. From my spot outside of the window, I heard what sounded like hangers moving along a rack and trunks being slammed shut. Whatever Pritchard didn’t want me to find was in that room, and I must have practically stumbled onto it. First chance I got—

The screws that attached the upper hinge of the shutter to the brick exterior broke.

As if in slow motion, the rectangular panel of slatted wood slowly pulled away from the building. The shutter moved diagonally, my weight pulling it off-center. Which would have been fine if the particular screech that comes from a metal hinge scraping a brick building hadn’t coincided with the movement.

“Who’s there?” Pritchard asked. I pictured him charging to the window and looking down at me, dangling from a shutter in my amber velvet suit. Despite the fact that I didn’t want to get caught, I couldn’t jump. The ground was three stories down and the fear of broken bones was high, as was acute humiliation. My heart raced and adrenaline coursed through my arms and legs. This can’t be it, I thought. I hadn’t been particularly eager to turn another year older, but the reality of
not
turning another year older seemed a trifle worse.

I braced myself and looked up, hoping a plausible story would spring to mind. Instead of the angry face of Pritchard, the window casing slammed shut and the latch clicked into the locked position.

His voice became muffled and barely understandable. Even if I could climb my way back to the frame, there would be no way in without breaking the glass.

I positioned the toe of my chocolate brown shoe into the mortar joint of the exterior brick and pressed ever so slightly, seeking leverage. I barely succeeded, but barely was good enough. I grabbed the ledge under the window, shifted my weight, and inched my feet along the brick. Underneath me, a car horn beeped. I turned my head and saw Eddie’s VW Bug idling next to the house.

Reason #2 spying on my coworker was a bad idea: The need to develop a cover story.

“You can’t tell Nick,” I said to Eddie.

“Tell him what? That you told me to give you fifteen minutes, and right before I drove away you popped out the third floor window and scaled the side of a building? Not that I’m not impressed by your mad Spiderman skills, but I’m not sure that story could work in Hollywood, let alone Ribbon, Pennsylvania. Do you want to tell me again what happened?

“The front door was open. I went through the house looking for Pritchard. I ended up in the attic. I heard him tell someone that he thought I was there, and I got the feeling it would be a very bad idea for me to be in the room when he entered. I went out the window because I thought I could get your attention from the balcony. There wasn’t a balcony. End of story.”

Eddie shook his head. “There are so many things wrong with that scenario that I don’t know where to start.”

“Well I do. Promise me you won’t tell Nick. He’s been worried about his dad since the heart attack, and I don’t need to be another thing for him to worry about. My role as his potential girlfriend is to be a calming presence in his life.”

“Did you get that from the ‘how to be a potential girlfriend’ guidebook?”

“I’ve been reading a lot of romantic comedies and I’ve noticed a trend. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal.”

I sat back and rubbed my palms against each other. Somewhere after the window slamming, I’d discovered the gutter that ran alongside of the house. Nothing like a little shinny down the drainpipe to make a girl feel spry. Once I was back on the ground, I pulled my blazer out of the handbag and put it on, hiding the scratches I’d incurred along the way. Unfortunately, my velvet pants were torn in three different places, one of which exposed the frilly lace trim on the side of my pink panties.

“So, what now?” Eddie asked.

I tucked the edges of my  navy blue shawl deep into the hobo bag. “Take me back to the
Retrofit
office. There’s something going on with Pritchard and I’d like to see what I can find out.”

“Translation: as long as he’s at that house, you have a window of time to snoop around his cubicle.”

Clearly I hadn’t fully embraced the reasons why snooping was a bad idea just yet because I thought he had a good point.

Eddie’s best efforts to get to work early had been dashed thanks to me and the hanging-from-a-building act, so I couldn’t complain about the fact that he drove directly to his job instead of dropping me off in front of mine.

The parking lot was mostly empty, but instead of cutting across the vacant spaces, I stuck to the sidewalk. It was a Wednesday in May, and it seemed the residents of Ribbon had better things to do than go shopping. I entered
Retrofit
and went to my cubicle.

Before
Retrofit
had become
Retrofit
, the offices where we ran the magazine had been a storefront for a local bakery. Every once in awhile I imagined the scent of various and sundry breads coming from the back of the offices where Nancie Townsend had set up the boardroom. During particularly long meetings, I would have paid good money for someone to show up and bake us a couple of loaves of sourdough.

Once the bakery had moved out and Nancie had obtained the keys, she’d taken it upon herself to convert the property to a business. The permanent walls had been painted yellow, the linoleum tiled floors had been covered in throw rugs, the counter had been taken out and replaced with moveable walls that created the perception of individual offices. The intern who worked as our receptionist and general Johnny-on-the-spot sat at a small desk out front. There weren’t a lot of jobs out there that included shopping on eBay for copies of
Vogue
in mint condition, and while I knew our rotating door of interns were unpaid, I suspected the sheer novelty of the job kept local fashion students in line for the next vacant position.

Keys jangled outside of the offices. Moments later, Nancie arrived in my doorway.