Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) (11 page)

But someone had gutted us of our files. Who? And why had they left my cubicle untouched? If it meant something, I didn’t know what. Except that whoever had cleared out the
Retrofit
offices had gotten away with everything—everything but the bible that I’d taken the day Tahoma was there. Aside from my office, the interior was as empty as Jennie Mae Tome’s attic. Whoever was responsible had expected me to come back and find it like this. They’d been watching me.

They were probably watching me right now.

Any instinct to make myself visible vanished. I grabbed my handbag from my office and ran out the front door to my car. I left rubber tire tracks in the parking lot in my haste to get out of there.

New plan: be invisible all the time.

I pulled the car into my garage and slammed the door down behind it. I found a half empty can of spray paint on the work bench and sprayed it over the glass panes of the mechanical garage door, blacking them out from the inside. My hands shook and the paint splattered on the inside of the door, leaving graffiti-like fuzz and, where I’d had a heavy hand, drips that looked like thick, black tears. The chemicals caused my eyes to water, mimicking the paint that ran down the inside of the door.

I went inside the house. Minus one pudgy black cat, the whole of it felt too big, too empty, too much. I pulled the living room curtains shut and clipped them closed with binder clips. I followed with the drapes in the kitchen and the blinds by the back door. As I made my way upstairs, I peeled off the crocheted hat, the vest, the cream-colored sweater, and the rust suede maxi skirt, leaving them in a trail to the bedroom. I tore the tags off the navy poly-blend sweatshirt and pants, put on the baseball hat, pulled my hair through the loop in the back and tied on a pair of Converse sneakers. I put my wallet, phone, lipstick, keys, and laptop into a Tradava shopping bag and left.

This morning, I’d wanted to be seen. Samantha Kidd, fashionista, girl about town. Now, I wanted to go unnoticed. I was dressed like a bag lady, and I knew there was one place where I could work without interruption, one place where nobody would think twice about my appearance. I drove the dead taxi to the library.

On my way there, my cell phone rang. Another call from Nick. I was still shaking from the encounter at
Retrofit
and, despite my efforts to keep him out of danger, I wanted to hear his voice. I answered the call and put it on speaker so I could drive.

“Nick, hi. Sorry I haven’t called you back. Work’s been busy.”

“You’re working?”

“Yes. Nancie has me buried in the Seventies. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve learned. Did you know a blue leisure suit with white belt and shoes was called a Full Cleveland?”

“Did I see your car at the Dairy Queen earlier today?”

“You did. I needed a quick pick me up. Sorry I didn’t come to your store to say hello, but like I said, she’s got me working around the clock. I know you said something about us getting together, but I don’t think you should count on seeing me for awhile.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Is this about my dad?” he finally asked.

“Your dad?” I repeated. “No.” Did Nick think I was superficial enough that I couldn’t handle him moving in with his dad while his dad recovered? Could I live with that in order to protect him? It was a small price to pay. “I mean, not really. It’s going to take me a little time to adjust, that’s all. You two should spend some time together, get to know each other.” I took a quick hard left to throw off anybody who might be following me and then swerved into the next lane. A car horn beeped and my phone slid from my thigh to the floor mat of the passenger side.

Nick’s voice came out tinny and faraway. “Kidd, he’s my dad. I already know him. And if his heart attack taught me anything, it’s that life is short. I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to start reacquainting myself with
you
.”

I wanted it too, but I couldn’t risk his safety. I leaned toward the phone and raised my voice so it would carry. “I’m sorry, Nick. I’m on my way to the library to research some stuff for work. If I finish up early, I’ll call you, but I think it’s going to be a long night.” The light in front of me turned yellow and I slowed and then stopped. I ducked down and swatted at my phone until my fingertips connected. I pulled the phone closer until I was able to pick it up and put it in the cup holder. The light changed and I pulled forward. “Hello?” I said. “Are you still there?”

It had taken Nick and me months of repair work to make up for the hurt over our break-up. Hours of phone conversations where we said nothing but somehow communicated everything that needed to be shared. Gradually, the pain had faded. And now here I was willingly making myself look bad. Distancing myself from what could be.

Reason #7: Snooping on your coworkers can lead to complications in your love life.

Except that a very small part of me wondered why Nick was pushing for this now? The last few months had been sweet. Between his business and his father, his hands had been full. The last thing I would have thought he’d want was to ratchet up the romance factor between us.

“Don’t work too hard,” he said. “Call me if you finish early.”

I tried to think of something to say but came up short. A few seconds passed, and the screen indicated that the call had dropped. I punched the steering wheel and the horn sounded. The driver in front of me rolled down his window and gave me the finger. I hollered back at him even though he’d done nothing wrong.

Good times.

I arrived at the library and circled the block three times until a parking space opened up. I ignored every impulse that told me to call Nick back and do damage control and forced myself to go inside. The sooner I figured out what Pritchard was up to, the sooner everything could get back to normal.

Despite the relatively safe feeling of the library, I still looked to my left and right before approaching the front desk. I felt watched, vulnerable. The librarian barely looked up at me when I approached. “I’d like to reserve a computer,” I said. I handed her my library card. “Preferably one in the back.”

She punched a few buttons on the keyboard. “Second floor, by the restroom. Here’s your password. There’s a one-hour time limit. If you want more time, come back to me and we’ll do this all over again.”

My cell phone made a noise for an incoming text. She looked at it. “No cell phones allowed. Turn it off or you’ll have to leave.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I switched the ringer to silent and headed off to my temporary office.

It took a few minutes to figure out the library’s search system and access the online databases that cross referenced articles from newspapers and magazines. In the past I’d had to locate issues of magazines and hunt them down on the shelves of the library archives. Since then, most periodicals had been digitized and I could find whatever I needed from the relative comfort of the plastic library chair. No wonder they enforced a one-hour limit.

The first person I looked up was Jennie Mae Tome. She and her walk-in closet seemed to fit all too well with the project at
Retrofit.
She was as good a place to start my research as any.

I pulled my small white lined notepad and Pritchard’s pen out and scrolled through mentions in
Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar,
and
Glamour,
pausing periodically to take notes.

Jennie Mae Tome was a wealthy retiree who had taken up residence in Ribbon, Pennsylvania after leaving the fashion industry in the early part of the millennium. As a teen, she’d gotten her start as a model, but that wasn’t to become her career or her legacy. She’d been quick to spot ill-fitting garments on the other models before catalog shoots or runway shows, and learned to make adjustments with whatever was handy: tape, band-aids, bobby pins, and ultimately her own makeshift sewing kit. When one designer spotted her lowering the hem of a mini skirt, he fired her. There’d been no time to undo her alteration before the show, though, and the mini—now a midi—had walked the runway of the local ladies’ country club spring fashion show. The audience, delighted at the notion that there was an option for women whose knees appeared older than their well-cared-for faces and youthful wardrobes, placed orders for the skirt that broke records. The designer spent the next two days tracking down Jennie Mae Tome from the contact information on file with the modeling agency that employed her. It would have taken less time if Jennie Mae hadn’t lied about her age or her address.

Jennie Mae quickly went from minor alterations to being asked for her opinion on new designs. Not one to conceive of clothes from scratch, she found it easier to tweak existing patterns than come up with entirely new ideas. She made samples of shirts with exaggerated sleeve fullness, culottes with wider legs and skirts that dropped to the floor. Her suggested tweaks to existing designs contributed to the success of many collections. While the designers received the recognition and the sales, Jennie Mae received their sample collections. Which, instead of wearing like they’d hoped, she’d tucked away in storage. Until now.

I stopped reading. Jennie Mae’s vast wardrobe hadn’t been curated by her own personal sense of style. They’d been gifted to her, direct from the designers she had worked for. The value of those clothes, having been stored sight unseen, some for upwards of forty years, was incomprehensible. And until a few days ago, they’d been housed in the attic of her house in Amity.

The pen fairly flew over the paper as I jotted the important details into my notepad and leaned back in the chair, thinking about what it meant. Jennie Mae hadn’t worked exclusively for one designer. She’d been ahead of her time. She’d touched many collections. She’d left her mark. Her eye for proportion and detail had changed the way that American women dressed. And almost nobody knew her name.

But for every bit of information I found about Jennie Mae the model and the influencer of trends, I came up short on mentions of her personal life.

Mere days ago, Nancie had spoken passionately about
Retrofit
’s first print magazine. Considering both she and Pritchard were MIA, it didn’t seem likely to happen. But if it did happen, if the photos of clothing from Jennie Mae’s archives became public, all of that would change. Jennie Mae would go from being a wealthy recluse to a cult figure. Was that a good thing? She must have seen it to be. Everything that had happened had started after she gave Nancie the green light to use her clothes in our premiere issue.

Unless she hadn’t granted permission at all. She herself had told me that her butler was in charge of running her estate. It was very possible that he was the one who had been dealing with everyone and she’d been left out of the decision.

I wondered, where was Mr. Charles on the day I showed up alone? Had he, too, seen me enter the attic or leave via the window? Had Loncar spoken to him yet?

Lost in my research, I didn’t notice the passing of time until my phone alarm indicated that the one hour time limit on the reserved computer was about to run out. The computer clock said it was quarter to seven. Even if I renewed the hold on the computer, I’d eventually have to make a decision about where I was going next. It was getting late. I didn’t want to drive the streets of Ribbon in the dark in a dead taxi with nowhere to go. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to go somewhere I’d feel safe. And short of sleeping in the dead taxi in front of the police station, I didn’t know where that safe place would be.

Except that there was one place...

I closed out the article that I’d been reading and pulled up the website for the Motel 6. Minutes later I’d reserved a room through their online portal. I was about to check into a motel with nothing but the clothes on my back, and somehow that felt safer than going home. It appeared as though I’d reached a new low only days before my birthday.

The Motel 6 was only slightly less welcoming at night. Approximately the same number of cars filled the lot as earlier today, only now they occupied spaces under the various street lamps. I pulled the dead taxi into a space by the front office and went inside to check in. The front desk clerk did not appear to notice my lack of overnight belongings. I requested Room 222 for kicks, but was told there were no vacancies on the second floor. He handed me the key to room 137 and told me it was next to the ice machine (and that I couldn’t miss it). I found the gift shop (a corner of the lobby) and purchased a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a new sweatshirt that said
I Got Tied Up In Ribbon!
across the chest in fuzzy white letters.

I left the office and sought my room. The desk clerk had been right about the ice machine. The unit was set off by a glowing blue sign with ICE spelled out in eighteen inch tall letters. I bet you could see it from the street. The machine made an erratic electric buzzing sound.
Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Clunk. Bzzzzzzzt.
I unlocked my door and was about to enter when somebody grabbed me from behind.

Chapter 13

FRIDAY
NIGHT
(
LATER
)

“What’s going on, Kidd?” Nick asked. “Checking into a seedy motel without bags?”

I looked around. “How did you find me?”

“You said you were going to be at the library. That it was going to be a late night. I wanted to surprise you.”

“Surprise me how? I told you I was working.”

“I was going to smuggle you a coffee and give you a thirty second shoulder massage. But when you left, I thought you were headed to my apartment and I followed you—until I saw you pull in here. A motel, Kidd?”

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

“Are you sure? Because I think you lied to me. You said you were working all night. You’re driving around in a beat up taxi, and now you’re at a motel—”

“Okay, it is what you think. Mostly. But I can explain.”

“I don’t want to hear excuses, Kidd. This—you and me—I thought we had a chance this time, but it’s never going to work if I’m the only one who wants it.” His voice rose steadily. His usually soft and comforting baritone voice was sharp, cutting through the otherwise quiet night.