Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) (16 page)

“She?” I asked.

“Yes. Nancie said she would send her fashion editor. I got the impression that that person would be a woman.”

I kept my immediate thoughts to myself so as not to interrupt her. Jennie Mae might not be aware, but
I
was Nancie’s fashion editor. If Nancie had been planning on sending me out to examine the clothes, when had Pritchard come into play? Or had that been a convenient line on Nancie’s part to put Jennie Mae at ease? If Nancie was Pritchard’s partner, she wouldn’t be overly concerned with job titles if using them could gain her access to something valuable.

“Being interviewed about my archives was a way for me to relive my past,” she continued. “Once the clothes were featured in
Retrofit
, their value would increase. Bethany House would be able to get far more for them than if they’d remained in my attic, and that would allow me to provide for my cats should anything happen to me.”

But now that the clothes had been stolen before any official appraisal had taken place, their value was unknown. Besides that, what channels could someone go through in order to make any kind of money off the clothes? The theft was public knowledge. It was the kind of story that could go viral once word got out. I doubted the motivation behind the theft had to do with shortchanging Jennie Mae Tome’s feline companions of their inheritance, but unless Pritchard had a contact list of black market wardrobe collectors in the back pocket of his three piece suit, I couldn’t figure out his angle.

“Where you surprised when that person turned out to be a man?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“Was it a man? I never met him. I was,” she looked at her tea service, “napping at the time. I assumed we missed the appointment. The next day, the woman—your boss—called, very excited. She said the magazine wanted to move forward with a feature and asked if I would grant exclusive access to my wardrobe to use in the editorial. She was very persuasive. She said that the exposure would validate the worth of my collection. I mentioned it only in passing to Mr. Charles and he seemed to agree that it was a good idea.”

“What day was this?” I asked.

“This past Wednesday.”

Otherwise known as hanging off a building day. Heat climbed my face. “So you never saw anyone from
Retrofit
?”

“No. Does that matter?”

“I don’t know. Nancie never asked me to come to your house, so I can only think that she changed her mind and asked Pritchard Smith to view your clothes instead.”

She dropped her tea cup. The calico cat by her feet jumped up and ran away. The teacup landed on the Oriental rug and the liquid disappeared into the thick pile. Jennie Mae reached for the empty cup and her hands shook. She balled both fists up and buried them into the fabric of her skirt.

“What was his name?” she asked.

“Pritchard Smith. Do you know him? Do you recognize the name?”

“I wish that I didn’t,” she said. “Pritchard Smith was my husband.”

Chapter 18

SUNDAY
AFTERNOON
(
LATER
)

If I’d been holding a china tea cup, I would have dropped it too. “I don’t understand,” I asked. Pritchard Smith was twenty years younger than Jennie Mae. The ages didn’t fit, but I already knew from the fake ID that “Pritchard Smith” probably wasn’t my coworker’s real name.

She gripped her hands hard enough that the skin on her fingers turned white. “I was barely legal,” she said. “I was a small town girl suddenly living a very big life. My parents died four days after my eighteenth birthday. Pritchard and I had grown up as neighbors. He was a few years older than me, but in a small town, you get to know most everybody. We married in a quiet ceremony.”

“Did you have children?”

“No. My lifestyle was such that children didn’t enter into the equation.” She looked at the cats and I immediately understood how she felt. They weren’t just pets to her; they were her children.

“How long were the two of you married?”

“Officially, we still are. I was on the road working and he couldn’t take that. He left me before our first anniversary. It took me months before I could acknowledge that he wasn’t coming back. I threw myself into work. It was 1972. That’s when I was the busiest. As long as I wasn’t at home, I wouldn’t know that he wasn’t there either.”

“Did you ever hear from him again?”

“No,” she said. She reached a hand up and wiped tears from her cheeks “For a long time I waited for him to return. I didn’t want to believe that he’d left me. But as the years went by, the memories faded and I learned to accept that he wasn’t coming back.”

I held myself very still. The story that Jennie Mae recounted to me was more than a story to her. It wasn’t just a collection of facts that she’d learned from an episode of TV; it was her life. I wanted her to continue, but had to separate my own morbid curiosity from the human need to protect her from reliving painful memories.

I reached out and put my hand on top of hers. “Jennie Mae, I’m so sorry to have brought this up. Is there anything I can get you?

She squeezed my hand and looked at me. Her clear green eyes were shot through with red, belying the efforts she’d made not to cry. “You said the man who came here was named Pritchard Smith. Could it be my husband? Could he have tracked me down to Pennsylvania?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. I didn’t want to offer conjecture, but the ages didn’t match the story. “I’m trying to understand how it all fits. Would you mind if I looked in your attic again?”

“There’s nothing there,” she said. “The trunks, the samples, the clothes. It’s all gone.”

“And you don’t suspect Mr. Charles?”

She shook her head. “He was just as stunned by the theft as I was. He notified all of the auction houses to be on the lookout for any garments that might come to them via off-channels, and has been spending his spare time combing the internet and news, hoping the thief will show his hand.”

I didn’t like how often the butler’s name kept coming up in relation to the clothes in the attic. It wasn’t the first time that I’d wondered if he and Pritchard were in cahoots. If he’d been involved in the theft, he could have given Pritchard access, helped move the merchandise off the property, and claimed to be managing the loss. He’d have the same motivation to watch the news for mention of the clothes if he were guilty as if he were innocent.

At that moment, he rounded the corner from the kitchen and noticed the tea cup on the carpet. He picked it up and placed it on the tray, and then picked up the tray and carried it into the kitchen. How much had he heard?

“Does Mr. Charles live here with you?” I asked in a lower voice.

“He stays in the guest house out back. We learned a long time ago that we were only compatible when we didn’t try to live under the same roof.”

“Compatible? I thought he was your butler.”

“How very
Sunset Boulevard.
” She laughed a full, throaty laugh. “We met years after Pritchard left me, but a relationship was doomed because without answers about my past, I couldn’t commit to a future. Do you have a gentleman friend?” she asked.

“Sort of.” I thought of the words that Nick and I had shouted at each other in the middle of the Tradava parking lot. Even though I knew I’d picked the fight in order to protect him, the things we’d said still hurt. They erased the memory of him kissing me last night and of waking up next to him on his side of the bed.

“How well do you know this man?” she asked.

“I’ve known him for over a decade.”

“It’s not about how
long
you’ve known him, it’s about how
well
you know him. You have to be vulnerable and open to the unknown. If you want the relationship to work, you’re going to have to put yourself aside and learn about him. That’s the only way you’ll ever know if you’re compatible.”

I looked away from her. I didn’t want her to see that she’d pretty much hit the nail on the head. I’d mistaken time for intimacy. I’d tried to maintain control, with my guidelines and boundaries. Nick had allowed me to have a hand in his business once. He’d let me see the challenges he faced in reclaiming his own label, and he’d even invited me over to meet his dad. But because I was so afraid of what he’d say when he got to know what was under the designer clothes, I hadn’t dropped my guard and let him in.

“Samantha, I hate to be rude, but it’s time for me to garden. If you have no other pressing questions, I’m going to ask if Mr. Charles will escort you to your car.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I said. I thanked her for visiting with me and left. Our time together had been brief but informational. I was eager to talk to Loncar, to find out what he thought about the value of Jennie Mae’s clothes and tell him about the connection between the name Pritchard Smith and her. I didn’t know why he was using that name, but the fact that he was here now, and had been inside her house was creepy. Jennie Mae had been a target long before Nancie had told me about this project.

I drove back to my house. The dead taxi was parked in the driveway and the broken glass pane on the garage door had been taped over. I braced myself for the inevitable confrontation and rang the doorbell. Loncar answered.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.

“And you are?” I glanced at the empty beer bottle on the coffee table. “What do you think this is, a bed and breakfast?”

“Ms. Kidd, I’ve heard about your cooking skills, so no, I would hardly mistake this for a bed and breakfast,” he said, emphasizing the last word. It would have been insulting if it wasn’t so accurate. “Get inside.” Once I was in the living room, he shut and locked the door.

“I was bugged,” I said. “The only things I had with me were my wallet, my phone, a lipstick, and a pen that Pritchard gave me. It had to be the pen. Pritchard knew where I was, he knew who I’d talked to. There was no other way he could have known that Nick was at the Motel 6. Or that you and I swapped rooms. Or that I was driving the dead taxi. Do you see now?”

“Where’s this pen?”

“My bag spilled in the parking lot of the motel. I lost everything. Did your team recover anything?” He shook his head. “If you don’t have it, then either he has it or it rolled under somebody’s car. Did you ask the hotel if they had security cameras? Or if anybody reported anything? Did your team find the slugs in the exterior wall?”

“My team has remained on top of the investigation.”

“What about my message? Did you go through the trash? Did you find the copy of the ID cards?”

“Ms. Kidd, where did you find those IDs?”

“In Pritchard Smith’s briefcase.” I diverted my eyes. “I’m not proud of this, but there was something about him that I didn’t trust from the beginning, and his briefcase was right there in the office, and it wasn’t locked, so I looked. And I was right, right? Four different IDs from four different states. And just now I was at Jennie Mae’s house and she told me—”

“You went to the Tome house?”

“You’re not listening to me. She told me that Pritchard Smith was her husband. She thought he left her. But think about it, the guy I work with has a bunch of different identification, and one of them has that name on it. He shows up here. He has to know about the clothes. He goes to her house. Mr. Charles handled the arrangements and I bet my coworker used a different identity so Mr. Charles wouldn’t be suspicious.”

“Ms. Tome told you all of this?”

“Yes.”

Loncar ran his hand over his hair. He looked around the living room, and then faced me again. He pointed both index fingers at me like Isaac from the opening credits of
The Love Boat
. “I told you to stay out of this.”

“With all due respect, I tried to stay out of it and Nick’s dad got kidnapped. Do you have an update on that? Has anybody heard from him?”

“Not yet.” He dropped his hands and balled them up into fists, and then released. If he’d been a cartoon character, smoke would have come out of his ears.

“Where are you staying tonight?” he asked.

“I thought I’d stay here.”

“You’re not staying here.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I could stay with your wife and daughter?” He stepped toward me and I stepped back and held up both hands. “Maybe not.”

“Wait here,” Loncar said. He pulled his phone from a pocket on his belt and went into the kitchen. A few seconds later, he came back. “I need privacy. Go to your room.”

“Yes, dad,” I said. I climbed the stairs, went into my bedroom, and slammed the door behind me.

There was no reason at all why I shouldn’t stay at my own house. Pritchard didn’t know I was there, and even if he did, I had a police detective there to guard me. It should have been the safest place I could be.

I wandered around the bedroom, getting reacquainted with my belongings. Hello, dresser. Hello, jewelry box. Hello, closet.

Hello, brown suede hobo bag that Logan had thrown up on. The same brown suede hobo bag that I’d had with me the day I jumped out of Jennie Mae Tome’s window.

In the middle of everything else that had happened since that day, I had forgotten all about that bag. If I didn’t do something about the spot on the suede, the smell would never go away.

I opened the bag and pulled out my navy blue fringed shawl. Under it was a silk scarf and a round object wrapped in several layers of antiqued white tissue. I must have picked it up when I grabbed my clothes. The object was light. I picked it up and unwrapped the tissue, layer after layer after layer. Before I’d finished unwrapping it, I knew what it was. The blood flow to my appendages slowed, leaving my arms and legs tingly and numb. I set the object down and went to the kitchen to find Loncar.

“I thought I told you I needed privacy,” he said.

“I thought you should know I just found a skull in my bedroom.”

I don’t remember a whole lot after that.

Chapter 19

SUNDAY
,
EARLY
EVENING

According to the medical examiner who stood next to the four policemen who showed up after Loncar revived me and called his precinct—possibly not in that order—the skull had been wrapped up for a long time. And if I hadn’t grabbed it when I went out the window, it might still be there. For all we knew, it might never have been found.