Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) (20 page)

The elevator doors opened and the receptionist pressed the door open button. Before I knew what was happening, she pushed me into the darkness. The elevator doors shut, leaving me in darkness.

Chapter 23

MONDAY
NIGHT

“Who’s there?” asked a voice I hadn’t heard for several days.

“Nancie? Is that you?”

“Sam?”

“Yes,” I said. “Keep talking. My eyes haven’t adjusted yet and I don’t know where I am.” I felt around on the floor for my handbag. I found a lipstick, a Snickers bar, and the canister of pepper spray before I found the bag. Nothing else appeared to have fallen out.

“I’m in front of the elevator doors. Where are you?” I asked.

“Turn to your right and follow the sound of my voice. Keep walking, keep walking, keep walking, okay, stop.”

“Where are you?”

“On the floor.”

I blinked a few more times but nothing happened. I pressed my eyes shut and counted to thirty. When I opened them, I was able to make out racks of clothing and shelves of shoes. Next to the shoes, I spotted Nancie. Now that I could see, I knew why she hadn’t gotten up to meet me. She was tethered by a length of rope to the foot of a large wooden dresser. About ten feet past her, a door was partially open, exposing the faint silhouette of a toilet.

I rushed over to her. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“It’s the strangest situation. I came here for a meeting. Pritchard said they were expecting me but I haven’t seen a person in days. At least I think it’s been days. I fall asleep, and when I wake up, there’s food and water. And it’s good food. But how do they know when I’m asleep?”

I ran my fingers over the rope around her ankle, and then pulled on it. “It’s unbreakable,” she said. “I put all of my weight on it, and if a hundred and sixty-five pounds won’t loosen it, then I don’t think your bare hands will.” She laid back and rested her head on a pile of clothes. “How did you get here?”

“I got your email.”

“That was a couple of days ago, wasn’t it?” She yawned. “I’ve lost all track of time.”

“I’ve been tied up with other aspects of the project,” I said. “When I called here, the receptionist told me you’d been working in the vault and that there was no cell phone reception. I thought it would be best to talk to you face to face so I came here myself.”

“You might as well get comfortable,” she said.

Nancie appeared to be more than a little out of it. Instead of taking her advice, I stood up and walked around the room.

“You’re sure nobody hurt you?”

“Sam, I’m not joking. The service here is almost as good as the Four Seasons.”

“You’re being held captive in the basement of an auction house,” I said.

“I said ‘almost’.”

I found my phone and tilted the screen in front of me in an attempt to illuminate our surroundings. Untraceable meant no data plan, so I couldn’t download the flashlight app. The best I could do was hit the End Call button every fifteen seconds, giving us short bursts of a blue glowing light. As if things weren’t dire enough.

“How are things at the magazine? Are you and Pritchard working well together?” Nancie asked. Her voice was soft and light, as if she’d taken a hit of Helium and it was starting to wear off. I looked at her. The blue glow from the phone faded, but I could see her face well enough to see that her pupils were dilated. Whatever had been putting her under had slowed down her cognitive functions.

“Nancie,
Retrofit
closed. There’s no magazine anymore. Pritchard Smith isn’t who he says he is.”

She scoffed. “That’s not possible. Pritchard might seem like a snob, but he’s completely dedicated to the work. He waived his salary for the opportunity. Did you know that? I knew this project would require more than what you and I could do, but I had to spend my time finding ad sponsors. I put out a call for an unpaid intern. When he showed up, I practically turned him away. He was obviously too qualified.”

Something Jennie Mae had said to me tickled the back of my brain. “Nancie, did you tell Jennie Mae Tome that I’d be coming to her house to view her collection?”

“Yes. I knew you’d love it. But Pritchard was in the office before you and volunteered to head out and get a jump start. I think he wanted to prove himself.”

“The man you hired is a fraud,” I said. “The real Pritchard Smith was a shady businessman. He was killed by his business partner. Somehow a skull, possibly his, ended up in Jennie Mae’s wardrobe. That’s what this guy is looking for.”

“Sam! Stop it. I don’t want to hear ghost stories.” She put her fingers in her ears.

I bent down and gently pulled her hands away from her head. “Nancie, they’re not ghost stories, they’re the truth. It’s all the truth. The
Retrofit
offices have been cleaned out.”

“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 good 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?”