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

I climbed into the cab of the truck and set my handbag on the floor by my feet. Pulled the car door shut. Buckled up the seat belt. All of a sudden I was nervous. Like I was fifteen and going on my first date.

“Kidd,” Nick said in a low, husky voice.

“Taylor,” I said back, though mine sorta squeeked.

He smiled. “Long time no see.”

“I was just thinking about that.”

He put the truck into gear and drove through the mostly empty lot until he reached the exit. His showroom wasn’t far from
Retrofit
, but instead of slowing down and turning right at the light by the Dairy Queen, he breezed through the intersection.

“You just passed your store,” I said.

“We’re not going to my store.” He reached over and threaded his fingers through mine. Two blocks later, he picked my hand up and pressed it to his lips in a gentle kiss. I might not have known what to expect from him, but the subtle gesture conveyed a shift between us. My decision to say yes to his invitation had been partially predicated on the fact that maybe we were just going to talk like we had been doing long distance. But the kiss indicated otherwise. My heartbeat picked up and I squirmed in the seat. Nick hadn’t mentioned my torn pants. He hadn’t cursed when we hit four consecutive yellow lights. He kept his eyes on the road, but the rest of the drive he didn’t let go.

“Do I want to know where we’re going?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Do I want to know why your pants are torn? Not that I mind the view of your panties.”

I pulled my hand away and tugged down on the bottom of my blazer. “Fine. I’ll let you surprise me.”

Nick kept an apartment in Italy, where he lived six months out of the year. After moving his base of operations from New York to Ribbon a few years ago, he’d rented a furnished apartment where I’d heard he sometimes stayed. When his father had a heart attack last year, he’d put his business on hold, sublet the apartment, and moved back to New York to help care for his dad. Nick hadn’t led me to believe that he was going to drive me to New York tonight, but I still wasn’t sure where we were headed.

We drove through downtown Ribbon, past street upon street of rundown Victorian row homes. He turned left at a church and after a few blocks turned right and right again. He eased his truck up to a private garage, fed a plastic card into an automated parking teller, and then pulled forward into a space by the elevator marked “Reserved.”

“Surprise,” he said. We got out and I followed him to the elevator wells.

“How long have you known you were moving to Ribbon?”

“A couple of months.”

“Why’d you kept it a secret?”

“I had big plans to throw you a surprise party.”

“Nice try.”

“New York was inconvenient. There are—there are a lot of reasons why I wanted to find something bigger. Truth is, it took awhile to find an apartment I liked and when I found this one, I didn’t want to jinx it.”

I stopped walking. “Am I one of the reasons?” I asked.

He reached for my hand and ran his fingertips over mine. “You’re the main reason,” he said softly. He tipped his head down and kissed me gently.

Whether it was instinct or the memory of kissing Nick in our on-again times, I didn’t know, but I grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him close. This time when our lips met, there was no mistaking my intention or his response.

“I want more, Kidd,” he said after the kiss. “My dad’s heart attack made me realize what’s important in life. I hope—I think—it just feels right.” His expression grew serious.

The elevator stopped and we got out. I ran my finger around my lips to fix any smudged lipstick. Nick walked to apartment 2001, but before he could insert his keys into the lock, the door opened up.

An older man who bore more than a passing resemblance to Nick stood resting on a cane in the hall in front of us. He looked at me, then at Nick, then back at me.

“Is this her?” the old man asked.

Nick rested his hand on the small of my back. “Samantha Kidd, I’d like you to meet my new roommate. Nick Taylor, Senior.”

Nick hadn’t invited me over for hanky panky. He’d invited me over to formally meet his dad.

Chapter 5

WEDNESDAY
NIGHT

I’d first seen Nick’s dad a little over a decade ago. I didn’t know if Nick Senior knew I was the same girl who had walked into Nick’s showroom and slipped my sample-sized foot into one of the shoes on display. Truthfully? It didn’t matter. You gotta love the universe. Just when you think you know where your life is headed, you learn that your coworker has an alias and your possible love interest has moved in with his dad.

Ah, life’s little curveballs.

“Mr. Taylor, nice to meet you,” I said.

“I know you,” he said. “When was it—ten years ago? You were a buyer from Bentley’s. Didn’t want me to see you trying on the samples in Junior’s showroom. I always wondered what happened to you. Did you know your pants are torn?”

“I-um-”

He looked at Nick. “Real conversationalist, this one.” He turned back to me. “Call me Nick.” He held out his hand.

I shook his hand. “I can’t call you Nick. I call him Nick.”

“You can call him Junior like I do.”

Nick’s eyebrows went up. “She’s not going to call me Junior.”

“Suit yourself. Anybody want a beer?” Nick Senior turned around and went to the kitchen.

I started to follow him, but Nick put his hands on my waist and pulled me backward. “From that kiss in the elevator, I don’t think hanging out with my dad is what you had in mind.” Now that was an understatement. “And it’s not exactly what I have in mind either.” He turned me around and stared directly into my eyes. “This is my life now, Kidd, and I want you to be a part of it. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I said. Nick put his hands on my upper arms and studied my face. I hoped for another whammy of a kiss before his dad returned. Instead, he pulled me in for a hug.

More than anybody else, I knew that it’s better to be involved in life than to sit on the sidelines. Nick’s invitation to his new residence spoke volumes about how he felt. While I was unsure of a lot of things, I knew he wouldn’t have brought me here if he didn’t want me to be here. I was an adult. I could learn to act like one. Plus, I was curiously optimistic that Nick’s dad would retire to his bedroom for an early night and we’d have a chance to spend some time alone together.

Behind me I heard a beer can open. I pulled away from Nick and turned around again. “There’s a documentary on about the Son of Sam. You two want to watch?” Nick Senior asked.

“Sure,” I said again, feeling the optimism slide away.

The documentary outlasted Nick Senior. Nick and I maintained our first-date-with-the-parents position, side by side, holding hands. When the credits rolled, he turned to me. “You probably have a full day tomorrow. How about I take you home?”

“Sure.”

We covered the four miles in a matter of minutes. Nick pulled into my driveway and threw the car into park. “Thanks for being a good sport, Kidd,” Nick said. “Sorry the Son of Sam monopolized our evening. You never got to tell me about this work project.”

I had hit overload on the amount of information to process in one night. “It can wait,” I said.

We sat like that for a few moments, just watching each other, saying nothing. I wondered what he was thinking. If he’d ask me about my own thoughts, I don’t think I could have articulated them. Finally, I reached over and put my hand on his. “Good night, Junior,” I said. I got out of the car and went inside. He didn’t drive away until the door was locked behind me.

I woke the next morning with Logan chewing on my hair. Two swats and one attempt to bury my head under the pillowcase proved ineffective against his feline determination. I pushed back the covers and went downstairs to feed him. I found my hobo bag on the floor, half of the contents spilled across the blue and white linoleum tile. Both my hobo bag and the folded copies of Pritchard’s many ID cards had a regurgitated blob on top of them.

“What is this?” I asked Logan. He looked up at me and meowed, as if asking me why I’d made photocopies of my coworker’s questionable ID cards in the first place. “Oh, come on. The man is clearly hiding something. Who fakes an ID from Utah?” I pulled several paper towels from the roll and wiped the gunk from them and from the handbag. Both now had a wet spots that didn’t smell particularly fresh.

Recently I’d noticed that Logan had put on a little bit of weight. The vet had suggested that I switch him to diet cat food, which had not proven to be a popular lifestyle change. My own diet was far from an infomercial for weight loss and it never seemed fair to enjoy the particular savory delight of meatball sandwiches and cheese steaks alone, so, while Logan now dined on reduced calorie kitty vittles, he also enjoyed the occasional meatball or chicken finger. I suspected the diet cat food was a poor substitute and the hairball was a message.

I went back upstairs, showered, brushed my teeth, and dressed in a black turtleneck, black flared pants, and a paisley caftan. I blow dried my hair upside down and tied a paisley scarf around my head Rhoda-style. Chunky heeled boots gave me a couple of additional inches of height. I dug a black fringed handbag out of the closet and carried it downstairs.

When I got back to the kitchen, I put my wallet, lip glosses, and phone into a black fringed handbag and then opened a can of diet cat food for Logan. He looked at the bowl and then at me and meowed. “It’s diet cat food or nothing.” I opened the freezer and pulled out a box of frozen waffles. He meowed again. I looked back and forth between the waffles and his bowl. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll eat Bran Flakes. Are you happy?”

Logan sniffed the bowl of food, gave me the saddest (most manipulative) look, and gagged a few times until another mess came up. After cleaning it, I left a message for Nancie that I’d be late getting to the office and took Logan directly to the vet.

“What have we here?” Nancie asked when she entered my cubicle several hours later. Logan, doped within an inch of his kitty mind, was sacked out on the carpet. He opened one eye and made a noise that sounded like sandpaper on a piece of bark, and then laid his head back on his paw and fell asleep.

“My cat is having trouble adjusting to his new diet food. I took him to the vet this morning. Apparently the higher fiber content has upset his stomach. He’s drowsy because he just got a shot to relax him.”

She ran her hand over his head. “Is the poor baby sick? Did the ittle bitty baby swallow something icky?”

Logan opened one eye again. Logan was neither ittle or bitty. He was a far cry from a baby too. He might have been sick, but the look he gave Nancie conveyed pretty much everything I was thinking. And then he stood up and gagged a few times, just to make sure she got the point.

She stood upright and stepped back. “New shoes. Suede. Can’t take a chance.” She backed away toward the opening to my cubicle, but stopped. “How’s the research going?”

“Research?”

“For the magazine. I heard from Pritchard this morning. He said he struck the mother lode of Seventies fashion at that private collector’s house.”

“What’s the collector’s name?”

“Jennie Mae Tome.”

“How did Pritchard find her?”

“He’s resourceful. And good for us! That boy is going to ensure that this whole project is a success. Make sure you carry your weight on this one, Sam. I know you know we’re a team, but there’s no point in working at odds.”

I wish Logan
had
thrown up on Nancie’s new suede shoes. What had Pritchard really done so far? Not much, as far as I’d seen. And the fact that Pritchard wasn’t really Pritchard didn’t help matters. Whatever he was doing on the payroll at
Retrofit
was a mystery.

“Nancie, how well do you know Pritchard?”

“Trust me, he’s qualified. I already told you, you two are my dynamic duo. A perfect complement to each other’s skills. Don’t get lost in the boys vs. girls thing, Sam. Fashion doesn’t discriminate between the sexes. It discriminates between those who have taste and those who do not. Hey, that’s good. I should write that down.” She laughed and then left.

I wasn’t in the mood to spend my afternoon in front of my computer digging up background material on designers from the Seventies, but as long as Nancie stayed at her desk, I didn’t have much of a choice. What started as a Word doc of cut and pasted info resulted in several hours on Wikipedia and a series of secret boards on Pinterest. I called the public library and set up an appointment to dig through their archives of vintage magazines and filled my Netflix queue with
Love Story
,
The Getaway, Annie Hall,
and
The Eyes of Laura Mars
. No way would I let Nancie think I was phoning it in while Pritchard Smith was in the field. Until this project was done, I was going to live, breathe, eat, and sleep the Seventies.

It was going to be Dy-no-mite.

Nancie took her customary break at quarter after twelve. She stopped by my cubicle. “How’s it going? Are you going to stop for lunch?”

“I’m on a roll. I’m going to work through.”

“Perfection! Pritchard emailed some info. First thing tomorrow, I want a sit down to see where we’re at.”

“Sounds good.”

I waited three whole seconds after the door shut behind Nancie to see what Pritchard had thought important enough to send her.

You work with the skills that you have (or have learned). At any other job, the punishment for hijacking my boss’s email and forwarding it into my own would be somewhere between clerical duty and termination. But Nancie had established a shared info policy. Plus, she had only three employees and I was one of them. I could talk my way out of this if I had to. I could blame it on the tech guy who set up her office equipment.

Nancie was right; Pritchard had been busy. What he lacked in actual get-it-done work ethic, he seemed to make up for in schmoozing. His email said:
spending the afternoon with Jennie Mae Tome. She’s granted us an exclusive before she finds an auction house to sell her collection. Twelve runway looks coming via email attachment. More later.