Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) (21 page)

She scanned the room. “If I were a size two, this would have been the greatest couple of days of my life.”

I’d always suspected that fashion people had a distorted connection between size and quality of life.

I reached up and grabbed the grid in front of the vent. A few shakes, and it came loose. I handed it to her. “The receptionist led me down here. She said it was close to closing time.” A low rumble started deep inside the vent. I held my hand up to the grate and felt the beginning of a cool breeze. “If I’m right about the AC, then we don’t have a lot of time. I’m going to try to go through the vent and get us help.”

“This is how you get involved in those situations, isn’t it?”

“Nancie, this is not me getting involved in a situation. This is me trying to save our lives. Neither one of us knows exactly what is going on here. The only thing I know is that the person behind all this doesn’t seem to shy away from violence. This is not the time to judge me.”

“Judge you? I was about to give you a raise.”

Cool air tricked out of the vent. “Give me a boost instead,” I said.

Nancie threaded her fingers together and I stepped onto her palms and then up into the air conditioning shaft. It was more narrow than I would have liked. For a moment, I wished I was wearing one of my new poly-cotton sweat suits.

The walls of the shaft were anodized aluminum. The surface was cold to the touch. I tied my scarf around my mouth bandito-style to filter the air and crawled on my hands and knees, making slow progress. I felt increasingly tired and dizzy as I progressed through the vent. I hoped that whatever direction I was headed in, it was the right one. The vent turned a corner, and then another one, and then there was a slight decline. I couldn’t shift or sit, so I continued. If not for the icy cold aluminum against my skin, I would have closed my eyes and fallen asleep. Eventually, I came to a stop with a view of the lobby through a dirty white plastic grid.

The vent was ten feet above the ground. It seemed I was destined to hang from impossible heights. Worse, I’d have to knock the plastic grid out in order to jump, and once I came out, I wouldn’t be able to reach the vent to replace it. Anybody who entered Bethany House would know that I’d gotten out. Which meant I’d have to get Nancie out too.

I pressed my face to the plastic grid and gulped at air from the lobby. I felt the haze in my mind clear up slightly. I smacked at the plastic until one corner popped out of the frame, then the second. A third whack and it swung out like a microwave door. I threaded my scarf through the slats on the plastic, flipped over so I was on my back, fed the top half of my body through the opening, and slowly climbed out. As soon as my full weight was on the A/C screen, it snapped away from the wall and sent me tumbling to the ground. My blouse tore at the shoulder, and I was pretty sure I’d have a nasty bruise from where I landed.

I pulled myself up using the corner of the desk. I grabbed the phone and called my home number. Loncar answered. “Send a team to Bethany House in Sanatoga,” I said. “They’ve been pumping something into the AC and holding a woman in the subbasement. I can get her out but you’ll find the evidence you need for when she presses charges.” I hung up and stared at the calendar on the desk. There were reminders of auctions and notes for appointments to look at various collections.

And then I saw something that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody but me.

Dentist 9:00 p.m.
Listed underneath the reminder was the address where I’d been meeting my source.

Chapter 24

STILL
MONDAY
NIGHT

It was a thin connection. Thinner than gauze backstage at a Cher concert. But considering I’d never heard of a dentist who kept office hours at nine o’clock at night, I didn’t believe it was a coincidence.

I opened and shut several drawers before coming across a janitorial key ring and a pair of industrial scissors. I ran to the elevator and flipped through keys until I found one that fit the control panel. I turned it half a turn and pressed the button for the subbasement. The elevator car descended and then came to a stop. I took a deep breath and held it.

The doors opened to darkness. I removed one of my chunky heeled shoes and wedged it between the elevator doors to keep them from closing, stepped into the darkness, and hollered for Nancie. A few moments later she called back, her voice weak. I felt my way to her and cut through the rope, and then pulled her to her feet. We stumbled to the elevator. I kicked my shoe out of place and depressed the button for the first floor. My lungs were convulsing with the need for a fresh breath. Nancie remained quiet. When the elevator reached the main floor, I pulled her along behind me. We didn’t stick around to talk to the police.

Against my better judgment, I drove Nancie to her apartment. She lived in the upscale units across the street from the Vanity Fair outlets, popular with the single, professional crowd. I declined her invitation to come in for a drink and suggested that she pack a bag and get out of town for a few days. Nancie didn’t have family obligations keeping her in town, which probably explained how she’d gone missing for several days and nobody but me had noticed. She looked like she still didn’t quite believe that I wasn’t playacting. I wrote two numbers on the pad by her phone: my untraceable cell and Detective Loncar’s direct line.

“Nancie, you need to call Detective Loncar and tell him what happened. Once he gets your statement, you need to consider getting out of town. There has to be some place you’ve always wanted to go. Now’s a good time to take a spontaneous vacation.”

She looked at the phone numbers. “Will the police help me get
Retrofit
back?”

“I don’t think that’s their priority,” I said softly. I put my hand on her arm. “But when this is over, I’ll help you.”
Retrofit
had been my most recent job, but it had been her lifelong dream. I didn’t know how else to console her.

After leaving Nancie’s house, I drove in circles, trying to figure out my next move. I was a little smarter than I’d been twenty-four hours ago, but not much. I needed a computer and I knew where I could find one.

I drove to the vacant
Retrofit
offices. The Office For Rent signs were still on the doors and a bunch of colorful flyers and coupons were stuck between them. The lights were out. I pulled my keys out of my bag and entered. The last time I’d been here was the day I saw that the offices had been emptied. I didn’t know if I was being watched or not. That thought alone kept me on edge.

It’s a well known fact in fashion that if you dress the part—any part—people will treat you as if you belong. Appearances matter. The vacant
Retrofit
offices were just like a nobody who’s employed the help of a stylist to dress the part. This emptied out office with For Rent signs on the windows was an illusion. The outside world had been led to believe, based on the way the offices looked, that Nancie had closed her doors. But it wasn’t real.

The offices had been dressed to look like it had been abandoned. I pieced together what I knew, established a timeline in my mind. Once Nancie had been hidden away in the basement of Bethany House, someone had made it look like she’d skipped town. She hadn’t been the one to remove all evidence of the magazine’s daily business. The appearance of an abandoned business would only throw suspicion on her in the long run. I doubted the rental company had been notified.

I doubted
any
of the companies who provided power, water, and trash had been notified. Whoever had cleaned out the files, shut off the lights, and taped signs to the front doors, had wanted people to think we’d gone belly up. I was guessing it was all about appearances. If I was right, the power, the water, and the internet would still work. I went to the breaker panel and flipped several switches.

I was right.

I sat in the dark at my desk, not wanting to leave signs of my presence. Pritchard’s message to me, leaving my own cubicle intact, had been his mistake. I remembered the notation I’d found on the calendar at Bethany House. If someone was meeting my source at the dentist’s office at nine, I intended to be there.

Now I had to do something about my outfit.

I called Cat Lestes, the owner of Catnip, an off-price designer outlet that I frequented on occasion. She kept my measurements, preferences, and credit card info on hand for fashion emergencies, and seeing as I had a torn vintage blouse and only one shoe, the emergency sirens were on high alert.

“Hi Cat, this is Samantha. I need your help.”

Cat was somewhat accustomed to me starting conversations like this and didn’t miss a beat. “Sam, you will not believe what came in today. Dead stock from a denim company. Hi-waisted Calvins like Brooke Shields advertised. Remember them? You had to lay on the bed to zip them up? There’s garbage bags full of them. I think they’ve been sitting in a warehouse since 1981.” She laughed. “I’m thinking of having them used to recover the sofa and chairs outside of the fitting rooms. Now, what’s the occasion?”

“Something non-descript. I don’t want anybody to notice me.”

“Cashmere jog suit? I have them in red, pink, and blue.”

“Too noticeable. What else do you have?”

“I have two racks of grey tweed on clearance. Never let the fashion magazines tell you that gray is the new black. I don’t care how many shades E.L. James says there are, in my world, there’s only one: markdown.”

“Are they boring? I want something boring.”

“I’m not in the business of carrying boring clothes. What is this for? Some kind of costume party?”

“Not exactly.” I dropped my voice. “I need an outfit that is the polar opposite of anything you’ve ever sold me. And I need you to deliver it to the dentist office on Penn Avenue before nine tonight.”

“Have you been hanging out with my brother again?”

I ignored her reference to Dante. If he hadn’t made it clear that he was interested in more than a mentor/mentee relationship, I would have called him. Maybe. If not for my reignited relationship with Nick. Heck, there were a whole bunch of reasons I had for calling or not calling Dante. Could he help? Probably. But Dante’s presence would introduce a whole new can of worms into the salad called life, and salad was bad enough. Who wanted worms with it?

“Please, Cat? Price is no object.”

The magic words. “Fine. What time is your appointment? Maybe we can have dinner afterward.”

“What appointment?”

“With the dentist.”

“There’s no appointment.” I debated how much to tell her. “Cat, this part is especially important. I need you to drop the bag of clothes into the Dumpster and then leave. Can you do that for me?”

I was late getting to the dentist. A group of guys climbed in the dead taxi at the red light by Lancaster Ave and didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t a real cab driver. I parked in the space closest to the Dumpster and climbed out. My source leaned against the side of the building. A cloud of cigarette smoke surrounded her, and a littering of butts covered the ground by her feet.

“You should have told me you were coming,” she said.

“How did you know I was?”

“Call it a hunch.” She inhaled from her cigarette. When she spoke again, the smoke exited her mouth in short bursts with each word. “A woman pulled in and tossed a bag in the Dumpster. Seemed curious so I looked. The bag had an envelope addressed to you.”

“That was my friend. She’s a big joker.”

“Right,” she said, in a voice that suggested that she neither cared nor believed me. She tossed another butt onto the ground and almost immediately lit up a new cigarette.

“You know those things are bad for you, don’t you? And they probably turn your teeth brown.”

“I get free cleanings,” she said.

Today she wore a plunging V-neck sweater tucked into a pair of black trousers. Again her boobs were hiked up and on display, and while there was no evidence of a bra, there was also no evidence that gravity had had an impact on her physique either. She appeared to have the same devil-may-care attitude toward the sun as she did cigarettes, because her cleavage was tan and spotted with freckles.

“What do you know about Bethany House?” she asked.

“The woman I work for was being held in their basement.”

“Was?”

“She’s not there anymore. She’s someplace safe.” I hoped.

“Bethany House is a front for stolen goods. They masquerade as a reputable auction house, but if you look at their books, they barely turn a profit.”

I mentally kicked myself for not looking deeper into Bethany House, especially in light of Tahoma’s connection. “How am I supposed to look at their books?”

“Tell your friend the policeman. Have him get a warrant to search the place. If you had left your boss there and just called it in, the police would have found her and had an excuse to do it themselves.” She tipped her head to the side and tugged on the bottom of her silver hoop earring.

“How do you know about him? Or that I didn’t tell him?” I asked. “How do you know he isn’t on his way here right now?”

She stepped backward. “Don’t try to find me,” she said. “I’ll contact you when I have something more.”

She put out her new cigarette and jogged to the side of the building. Considering I knew where she worked, her dramatic closing lines lacked the punch I think she’d desired. I waited five minutes after she was out of sight to dig Cat’s bag out of the Dumpster.

It was late and I was tired. And hungry. And even though Cat had triple-bagged the outfit she’d left in the trash, I couldn’t shake the scent of garbage. I wasn’t exactly known for skipping meals, but the last food I remembered eating was pizza with Nick last night. As far as last meals went, it was a good one. And if I remembered correctly, there had been leftovers.

I drove the dead taxi to Nick’s old apartment, circled the building twice, and then parked in the back and went inside.

The apartment was in much the same condition as it had been last night. Snooping on Nick had lost its allure so instead, I stripped down to take a shower. Crawling through an air conditioning duct and Dumpster diving weren’t exactly a day at the spa.