Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) (7 page)

Chapter 7

THURSDAY
,
NOON

The attic was larger than it had appeared when filled with clothes. I crossed the floor, my shoes making soft
thud
sounds against the worn wood. I opened the window and leaned out, looking to my left first and then right, expecting to see something amiss. The view was much like the day before, or what I remembered before defenestrating myself. No moving vans were pulled up to the property. No shady looking people were hauling away garbage bags of fringes and gauchos. The only activity in range was a truck of landscapers who were unloading potted plants from the back. If Pritchard had packed everything up and taken it out of the building, Nancie would have told me.

I ran down the stairs. Nobody was on the second floor. Down the second flight of stairs, half running, half falling, mostly stumbling. Jennie Mae was resting on the divan, snoring slightly. I knocked into a glass shelf that held vases of silk flowers. They fell, and colorful glass pebbles scattered out and pelted the carpet. I pushed through the swinging doors and found Mr. Charles in the kitchen.

I pointed my finger toward the ceiling. “What happened to the clothes?”

“What clothes?” he said.

“The clothes in the attic. They’re gone.” I stopped talking. Nobody knew I’d been in the attic, and if I were going to admit it to anybody, I didn’t think Mr. Charles was going to be my first choice. “I heard from my coworker that Jennie Mae has a vast collection of clothing in her attic. I just took a peek”—I turned, put a hand on one saloon door and leaned forward, checking to see if Jennie Mae was still asleep—“but the attic is empty. I assume someone came for the collection?”

“No one came for the collection.” The butler moved past me to the living room. He took the stairs two at a time. I lost sight of him after he hit the landing. Seconds later I heard him cry out, “No-no-no! We’ve been robbed!”

I picked up the wall mounted phone and called 911. “Nine-one-one, please state your emergency,” said a male voice.

“There’s been a robbery,” I said. I gave them the address even though I knew it was displayed on their screen. I heard a sound behind me and turned around. The saloon-style doors to the kitchen swung shut, as if someone had been holding them open. I stepped closer to them but the short phone cord yanked me backward. The sudden movement, coupled with the bourbon, the empty attic, and the banana bread all came together in one giant nauseating punch to the gut and I dropped the phone and threw up in the sink.

Reason #5: snooping eventually leads to the police.

I sat on the front step to Jennie Mae’s house. The breeze picked up the edges of my caftan and blew them around. A uniformed officer looked at me and then gestured behind him to a man in white. “We need a medic over here,” he said.

I held up a hand. “I’m fine.”

“I’m not taking that chance.” He instructed the medic to give me the once over, and then he went inside the house. I stood up and followed the man in white to the medical van. After checking my blood pressure, pupil dilation, and pulse, he handed me a bottle of Muscle Milk and a straw. “You need protein. Drink this and wait here.”

“I have to go back inside,” I said.

“The cops won’t like that,” he said.

“They never do.”

I downed the beverage and handed the empty carton to the medic. “Thank you. I feel better already.”

I hoisted my caftan up around my waist and undid the button on my pants. It didn’t help the have-to-pee situation.

I went back inside the house, leaving the front door open so sunlight could illuminate the dark house. The chair that Jennie Mae had been resting in was now occupied by the black and white cat. Detective Loncar, Ribbon’s version of Columbo, stood next to the tray table that still held the ceramic pot of tea and the empty glasses. He wore a neatly pressed olive green suit with a white shirt and a yellow and olive speckled tie. I’d grown used to the site of his buttons stretching across his belly, but today they laid flat. He must have either lost weight or sized up.

“Ms. Kidd.”

“Detective Loncar,” I said.

“You don’t look too good.”

“Bourbon,” I said.

“That’s not like you.”

“I know.”

The detective used the end of his pen to lift the empty tea cup and sniff the residue.

“That’s where I got the bourbon,” I said. He turned to me but didn’t say anything, so I continued. “I thought it was tea.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Mr. Charles brought it from the kitchen.”

“Who’s Mr. Charles?”

“The butler.” Loncar crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn’t say ‘the butler did it.’ I said the butler brought the tea from the kitchen. Those are two very different sentences.”

“Where did the butler go after he served you the spiked tea?”

I looked the direction of the stairs. “The last time I saw him, he went up there.”

Loncar looked toward the doors. “You followed him?”

“No. I heard him holler something about being robbed and I went to the kitchen to call you.”

“Ms. Kidd, I would like nothing more than to tell you to stay out of this, but right now, you’re about as in the middle of it as a person can get, so instead I’m going to tell you to answer my questions as honestly as you can. Withhold nothing. Do you understand?”

I held up my hand, palm-side out. “Before we do this thing that we do when I end up in these kinds of situations, can I go to the bathroom?”

“Sorry. The rest of the house is off limits. Tell me again what you’re doing here?”

“I’m here on a job. A paying job.”

“Who’s your employer?”

“
Retrofit
Magazine.”

“So your employer knows you’re here.”

I bit my lip. “Not exactly.”

“Miss Kidd, have a seat. We need to talk.”

It took Loncar’s team several hours to secure the scene. Jennie Mae Tome’s cats swarmed under the feet of officers who photographed the interior of the house. I watched from the doorway, since I’d been instructed to wait outside. In time, Loncar joined me.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Better,” I said.

“Can you call someone to pick you up?”

“I drove.”

“I think it’s best that you leave your car here for the night.”

“You can search it if you want. I didn’t take anything.”

“I’m not accusing you of theft.” He paused. “I’m not convinced you’ve sobered up enough to be safe behind the wheel.”

I was about to argue when a hiccup escaped my mouth. “I’ll call a taxi.”

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

The
Retrofit
offices were empty by the time the cab driver dropped me off. I would have gone straight home, except that I wanted to pick up Logan and I really needed to pee. I went straight to the restroom, and then, after washing my hands, headed to my cubicle. “You are not going to believe the day I had,” I said as I turned the corner.

“Try me,” said a voice from behind my desk.

I jumped and turned to face my desk. Pritchard sat behind it, holding Logan in his arms.

Chapter 8

THURSDAY
AFTERNOON

A dark shadow was cast across Pritchard’s face, making it difficult for me to see him. I stepped forward and he turned on a light and shined it directly into my eyes. I shielded them, too late. Spots of red filled my vision. “What are you doing in my office?” I asked.

He moved Logan from his lap to the desk. Logan let out a low, throaty growl. I closed the distance between us, scooped him up, and retreated to the doorway.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Pritchard said. “I can assure you that I didn’t hurt your cat.” He leaned back in my chair and smiled. Despite his reassurances to the contrary, his presence felt threatening. “You silly girl. If you had done your job, you would have been left out of everything. If you had only minded your business. But you didn’t. People warned me about you. I should have expected this.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“How much do you think Jennie Mae’s vintage wardrobe is worth?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know the extent of her collection. I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh, but you do know, Ess Kay. You saw it the day you went looking for me in her attic. Too bad that shutter didn’t give under your weight. This whole problem would have solved itself.”

He’d known that I’d been there. He knew about my attempt to hide and the escape out the window.

“In a wa-a-ay,” he said, dragging the word “way” out into three syllables, “you set this whole thing into motion. And now there’s a ticking clock.” He tapped his index finger on the top of the desk as if keeping time. “How does that make you feel, Ess Kay? That there is a timer running in the background, a specific length of time in which certain acts will unfold?”

He stopped tapping. “You already know more about what is going on than you should, Ess Kay.” He kept saying my initials phonetically.
Ess Kay
. He dragged the S sound out like a hiss.
Esssssssss.
It reminded me of the cobra in
Riki Tiki Tavi
. “Yes, you know quite a bit more than I like. But I know a lot too. For example, I know you live on West 47
^th
Street in a house that you purchased from your parents. How charming.”

He leaned back in the chair. I held Logan tighter.

“I know you have a cat,” he continued. He waved his index finger at Logan’s face. “Hello, Logan,” he said. “I know you’ve had troubled employment since leaving Bentley’s New York. Your family lives in California, except for your sister, who lives in Maryland. Bethesda, if I’m not mistaken.”

I tightened my embrace of Logan to protect him. I already knew Pritchard was hiding something, but how did he know so much about me? Worse, what would he do to the people I loved? And then an image of Nick flashed into my brain.
Nick,
I thought
. He doesn’t know about Nick.

“You’re going to help me, Ess Kay. And if you help me like I ask, nobody has to get hurt. There is something at the Tome house that I need and you’re going to get it for me. I can’t go back there, but you can. Your boss will insist on it. This might work out yet. Perfection,” he said, and chuckled to himself.

I started to tell him he was wrong, that someone had stolen the contents of Jennie Mae’s attic, but I bit back my words. He claimed to still need something that was there. If Pritchard hadn’t stolen the collection of samples, then who had?

He stood up. I backed away from him. He laughed again. “I’ll be watching you, Ess Kay. And I’ll be in touch.” He reached out to pet Logan. I twisted around so his hand fell short. “No matter. We had plenty of time together before you arrived.” He laughed again, picked up the brown leather briefcase with the gold PS monogram, and left.

As soon as the front doors closed behind him, I raced forward and locked them from the inside. I knew it didn’t matter. Pritchard had already been inside
Retrofit
when I’d arrived. Nancie had probably given him a set of keys. He could come and go as he wished.

The idea that someone could get to me so easily ignited my nerve endings, sending a buzz to the surface of my skin. I’d been in tight situations before but never with someone so confident that they’d sought me out in plain sight. The risks I’d taken in the past had been life-threatening, but only because I’d actively pursued situations that put me face to face with killers.

But this time, I had no choice. My curious streak had led me into the attic, and because I’d gone back, I was being roped into something dangerous, despite the fact that I’d called the police and cooperated with them. While I’d been chatting with Detective Loncar, a crazy man had demonstrated how easily he could get to me by abducting my cat.

Before I stopped to process what I’d seen and tried to reconcile the pieces of fragmented truths, my brain went onto autopilot.
Get out of here
, a voice screamed inside my head. I put Logan in his carrier, grabbed my laptop, notes, and handbag, and left before I realized I didn’t have my car. It was still in Amity.

I ran to Tradava. Logan yowled with the jostling and shifted from one side of his carrier to the other. Until I knew what I was going to do, I was going to stay in very public places. I entered the store by the prom dress department, cut directly through juniors and past costume jewelry to the door that led to the stairs that ended right in front of Eddie’s visual office. Eddie’s back was to me. I stood, framed out by the doorway, clutching Logan’s carrier to my chest, trying to figure out what to say.

“Meeeeeeeoooooooow,” Logan said, making two syllables last about four beats.

Eddie turned around. “Dude, what are you doing here? Is that Logan? New question. What is Logan doing here?”

“I need a favor,” I said. “A really big, enormous favor with no questions asked.”

“Fine, I’ll make you fried chicken for dinner.”

“I need you to take Logan for a couple of days. Maybe more. I don’t know how long.”

He looked at me and then at the carrier. “Is everything okay?”

“Please. Don’t tell anybody. He’s a really nice cat. He’s supposed to be on a diet but he really likes the kind of cat food with that cat that eats out of the crystal bowl. He’ll need a litter box. I’ll pay you back for whatever you buy.”

“Dude, I know how to take care of a cat. What’s up?”

“Work is—work is a little off the charts crazy right now and you’re probably not going to see me all that much until I’m past some of these deadlines. So please, don’t come looking for me, don’t call me, don’t invite me over for dinner. Pretend I don’t exist.”

“Is this a birthday thing? Just because you’re one step closer to death is no reason to shut out the world.”

I started to deny the correlation but the fear of letting Eddie know and potentially putting him in danger stopped me. “I’m a little overwhelmed. Everything is going to go back to normal in a couple of weeks, okay?”

“Okay, but considering both your lifestyle and the alternative, you should consider yourself lucky that you
are
still around to celebrate another birthday.”