Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) (15 page)

The second call was to Nick. He answered halfway through the first ring, like he’d been waiting for my call. “Have you heard from your father yet?” I asked.

“No.”

Wrong answer. If this was Pritchard’s move, then I had to outsmart him. I bit my lip. Tell Nick my plan or not? I couldn’t risk tipping my hand and having him say no. If I was going to pick a public fight in order to distance myself from him and keep him safe, I was going to have to keep him in the dark. “Nick, I’ve been thinking about last night and I think we should talk about what’s going on between us. Meet me in the parking lot outside of
Retrofit
in twenty minutes.”

“Kidd, I’m a little preoccupied. Can’t this wait?”

I took a deep breath and steeled myself. “There isn’t going to be a better time, Nick. We need to talk. Today.”

Chapter 17

SUNDAY
AFTERNOON

I was ready for a fight.

True to his word, Det. Loncar had pulled up in front of the spy store not long after I’d called him. He didn’t ask about the bag I carried and I didn’t volunteer information about its contents, either. He navigated lefts and rights through West Ribbon until he turned onto my street. Soon enough, he pulled into my driveway.

“Can I have my keys?” I asked.

His expression changed. “They’re in my desk drawer.”

“What are they doing there?”

“Keeping you from entering your house.”

“You know, you should be nicer to me. From what I heard on the news, you’re out of a hotel room and I have a spare sofa.” I hoisted my bag of spy gear out of his car and carried it around back.

I’d once read that seventy-five percent of people hid a key to their house within five feet of the door. There had been a period of time when that was true for me too, only it had been Nick and Eddie who hid the key, not me. I’d never gone in much for conformity, so the last time I locked myself out of the house, it had been a challenge figuring out how to break in.

I set the bag down by the back door and walked to the picnic table. “Grab an end,” I said to Loncar.

“What for?”

“I need to get to the second floor window. The screen is bent and if I can pop it out of the frame, I can disengage the faulty latch and raise the window enough to climb in.”

Loncar looked up at the window for a few seconds. “You didn’t just come up with this plan, did you.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’ll work. Trust me.”

We carried the picnic table to under the window, and then stacked the benches on top of each other on top of it. I was happy to be in sneakers and not heels. I climbed the stack of furniture, removed the screen, and tossed it to the ground. It landed a few feet from the detective. The wooden bench under my foot snapped in half and I grabbed the window to keep from falling.

Hanging from the side of the building was no less terrifying today than earlier in the week.

“You okay up there?” Loncar asked from the ground.

“Peachy.” I pushed off what remained of the bench and hoisted myself into the window. What I hadn’t wanted to tell him was that the window led to my bathroom. A sloppy landing would put me right in the middle of the commode. I pulled myself through the opening, used one hand to shut the toilet seat, and then eased my way through until I was resting on the thick aqua rug. I flipped over and stared at the ceiling, breathing in and out, in and out. I was starting to believe my house was cursed.

The door to the bathroom opened. Loncar stood, upside down. I rolled over to my stomach, got onto all fours, and then stood up. “How’d you get inside?” I asked.

He held up a set of tools. “In case of emergency,” he said. “When that bench broke, I figured I had your permission to enter the premises.”

“You could have told me.”

I gave Loncar the copies of Pritchard Smith’s various IDs and he left. I changed out of the
I Got Tied Up In Ribbon!
sweatshirt and into a rust colored jog suit that my mom had scored when I was a kid. The patch on the sleeve was embroidered with the slogan, “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby!” in marigold thread. She hadn’t been a smoker, but the offer of a free sweat suit emblazoned with a positive message had been too good to pass up. After collecting barcodes from the cigarette packages of all of her friends, she obtained the knit ensemble, wore it exactly one time, and then packed it away in a box that she’d left in the attic. I found an old pair of Reeboks in the back of my closet and laced them on. I tied a yellow and rust paisley scarf over my new waist length hair, and left.

For the first time since I’d been back in Ribbon, I made the hike from my house to Tradava by foot. It was less than a mile, and whether it was the cigarette company slogan stitched to my arm or the emotional journey I’d traveled in the past few days, I felt like I’d accomplished something significant in addition to burning off a handful of calories.

Nick’s white pick-up truck was already in the parking lot, most likely because I was forty minutes late. I stood by the front of Tradava next to a bench that had been bolted into the sidewalk. The parking lot and store entrance were busy with shoppers, people headed to a matinee at the movie theater, and the late lunch crowd. To me, they were witnesses. Nick got out of his truck and came toward me. A stray shopping cart from the grocery store nearby rolled into his path. He stepped around it and met me by the front facing display windows. His eyes flicked from my face to my sweat suit to my hair extensions and back to my face.

I stepped back and put my hand up. “Don’t,” I said.

“What?”

I launched into what I’d rehearsed in my head. “I can’t do this, Nick.” I waved my hand back and forth between us. “You want me to be somebody that I’m not. We’ve been over this and over this too many times. It’s not going to work. It’s never going to work.”

“Kidd, I never said I wanted you to be somebody else. I want you to be you.” His eyes jumped to my unnaturally long hair again. “Who are you trying to be today?”

“I’m me. That’s just it. You think you know me because you’ve seen some of my clothes. Well, you don’t know me. You know some of me. You know the me that wears heels and dresses and menswear—”

He cut me off. “And you know some of me too. That’s all. I know you could rattle off five things about me if you needed to, but how well do we know each other? That’s the point of a relationship. We have to get past what’s on the surface before we’ll ever really know anything of substance.”

Was that true? Did I only know who Nick was on the surface?

I couldn’t let his logic distract me from the fight. I straightened up. “I know everything I need to know about you, Nick. You’ll never be able to commit to me the way you’ve committed to your company.” I cast a glance at the people closest to us to see if they were watching. So far, we hadn’t attracted much attention.

“Where is this coming from? You’ve never had a problem with my being a shoe designer before. And having a job doesn’t mean I can’t have a personal life, too.”

“That’s right.” I raised my voice. “All of your traveling to Europe and back, spending time with models and rich Italian women. How am ever supposed to trust you?”

My throat hitched and my sight blurred with tears. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to drive him away. I didn’t want to alienate him; I wanted to ask about his dad and tell him about the shooting. I wanted to feel like part of a team instead of trying to do everything myself. Last night had been a huge step forward in terms of trust, but if I confided in him now, I could be risking his life. The tears spilled onto my cheeks and dripped onto the rust cotton sweatshirt. I couldn’t say anything I wanted to say, but I could barely stand behind the words I’d rehearsed in the car.

People were staring at us. Among them was Eddie. He pulled away from the crowd in front of Tradava and advanced toward us, but then stopped. He was the only one who had an inkling about what had been going on with me, and I was afraid to look at him, afraid that I’d give in to the truth, confess that the entire scene was fake.

Nick’s face had turned red. “How are you supposed to trust me? The same way I’m supposed to trust that you don’t call Dante Lestes to keep you company while I’m away.”

“Dante? There’s nothing between me and Dante. The last time I saw him was after I saved your ex-girlfriend’s life!” Whatever I’d hoped to accomplish had gone from pretend fight to a public airing of our issues. I’d been surprised when Nick mentioned Dante at the motel, and now here it was again. Was he really that jealous? Was I? Pent up nerves from everything that had been happening exploded in anger and I was too far gone to rein myself in. “This is never going to work, Nick. We want different things.”

He took a couple of steps back and turned away, but then turned back and faced me. “I know you’re under a lot of stress, Kidd. I thought I knew you well enough—I thought I knew you. But right now?” He glanced down at my sweat suit again. “I don’t have a clue who you are.”

“Don’t judge me. If I want to wear sweats in public, then I’m going to wear sweats in public.” I needed to make this seem convincing. I turned around and walked away.

Nick didn’t follow.

Behind Tradava was a field. Around the back of the field was a trail. At the end of the trail was a Stop Sign. And four blocks past the Stop Sign was my house. It wasn’t the route I’d taken to get to the department store, but I sought the cover of overgrown weeds while I got my emotions in check.

There were no cars—taxi or otherwise—in the driveway. I couldn’t see in the garage because I’d blacked out the windows with spray paint, but I assumed that my Honda del Sol was still there. I grabbed a rock and threw it through a pane of glass on the garage door.

I’d been right about my car. The rock landed on the hood, leaving a dent.

In spite of the challenges that having hair straight off the cover of Crystal Gayle’s Greatest Hits came with, I moved quickly. I packed an overnight kit, grabbed fresh underwear, and snatched my spare set of car keys from the junk drawer in the kitchen. Five minutes after I’d broken in, I drove away. I trusted that Loncar would know what to do about the window.

Sooner or later I’d have to come up with a plan for where to spend the night. If I played my cards right, that problem would solve itself. I drove to where the drama had all started in the hopes of figuring something out. I headed to Jennie Mae Tome’s house. She didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“Ms. Kidd, please, come in. Mr. Charles just prepared my afternoon tea. Would you care to join me?”

“I’d love to join you, but not for tea,” I said, remembering the last cup of tea I’d had at her place. “Jennie, in the past week, I’ve been drugged, threatened, and shot at. The only job that I’ve managed to hold on to since moving to Ribbon is gone and the only connecting thread to all of this is the assignment from
Retrofit
and the collection of clothes that were in your attic. So, I’m curious. What can you tell me about them?”

She looked at the mug of tea that sat in front of her, picked it up and raised it to her lips, but didn’t drink. Moments later, she set it back down and leaned back in her chair.

“You know a thing or two about fashion, don’t you?” she asked. “Not about what the kids wear today, but the history of fashion. That’s how you found the job at
Retrofit
.”

“Yes,” I said. “I read about your history with designers and their runway shows in the Seventies. I know that you were instrumental in changing the way women dressed and that the clothes in your attic were payment for your work back stage.”

“Then it should come as no surprise to you to hear that those clothes are worth, shall we say, more than one might expect from a couple of trunks of old clothing.”

“No, I don’t suppose that it does.”

“Mr. Charles convinced me that I wasn’t getting any younger and that, in order to care for my cats, I should have the clothes appraised. I contacted Bethany House and an appointment was made. The executive director seemed to think my collection of samples would be valued in the millions. He said there were private collectors, designers, and museums that would be interested in buying should I ever want to sell.”

“Did Mr. Charles tell this to Detective Loncar?” I asked.

“I don’t suppose he would have thought it pertinent. The appointment never happened.”

Interesting, I thought. Tahoma was the Bethany House executive director. Bethany House would have the contacts to sell off Jennie Mae’s wardrobe and make a lot of money, and a dishonest director could have done it on the side.

“Why didn’t you wear the clothes?” I asked. “I’m sure that’s what most of the designers had hoped for when they gifted them to you.”

She went quiet for a moment, seemingly distracted by memories, not all good. “I had the body and the face for fashion, but not the lifestyle. I grew up in a small town and married young. My husband ran off and left me with nothing. At the time that I was given many of those items, I would have gladly turned them down and taken money instead.”

Jennie Mae lifted her china cup and sipped her tea. She rested the saucer on her lap, covered in a burgundy afghan with harvest gold edging. The color palette was not dissimilar to my Virginia Slims jog suit. Behind her, a collection of frog ceramics covered the surface of her piano and a series of shelves on either side of the windows.

She moved the china cup from her lap to the tray. “Months later,
Retrofit
called me. The managing editor said they were doing an article on Seventies fashion and she had tracked me down.”

“That was my boss, Nancie,” I interjected.

She nodded. “She asked if I would be interested in a feature story, a spotlight about my contribution to the look of the Seventies. I am not one to sit around hoping for attention. My modeling days are behind me but I find that old garments are far more interesting than old people. I politely suggested that to her and mentioned the samples in the attic. She said she was going to send someone to the house for an interview, and would I mind if she took a few photos of the clothes for reference?”