Some Like It Haute: A Humorous Fashion Mystery (Style & Error Book 4) (22 page)

“You’re not going to say it was an accident, are you?”

“No. but if the arsonist rigged things to burn themselves out, he probably didn’t want to stick around to see how it unfolded. Makes me think it was a message.”

“Your men seemed a little annoyed when they got here.”

“Not annoyed. There’s a certain adrenaline rush that helps them act fast and minimize the threat of an open fire. When they arrived and the fire was out, they were left with all this adrenaline and nothing to act on.”

“So you put out the fire, the firemen arrived, and then what?” Loncar asked.

“Then nothing. Gigger showed up and accused me of being the common thread at all of the fires. You showed up somewhere around there.”

“He’s right, you know. You were present each time.” He held his hand palm-side out. “I’m not saying you set the fires. I’m not saying it’s anything more than coincidence. But you best think about that, because there’s a chance that you can offer us a lead that we don’t have.”

I sank down onto the sofa and held my head in my hands. The room went silent while they waited for me to come up with a theory. “I don’t know what kind of a lead you think I can come up with. This fire was in front of a private residence. It was clearly a message, because it was in front of
my
private residence, but that doesn’t mean it makes any more sense.”

“Ms. Kidd, if there’s anything you remember from any of the other fires, I’d like to hear it. I think the fire captain would like to hear it too.”

I looked back and forth between Loncar and the captain’s faces. They weren’t treating me like I was a nuisance. Instead of ridiculous accusations like Gigger, Loncar had actually asked me for help. Politely, too!

Before I could say anything, a fireman burst through the front door. His helmet was back in place and his chest was puffed out, like a cage fighter at go-time.

“Yo, Cap, we gotta leave. There’s been another fire downtown.” He rattled off an address. The captain jumped up and ran out of my house.

And I sat on the sofa, feeling like someone had dumped a ten pound bag of ice down the back of my shirt.

The new fire was at Amanda’s studio.

28

Within seconds the firemen were gone. Gigger put a Kojak light on top of his car and sped away from the curb. Eddie stood with Loncar and me on the front step.

“Aren’t you going with them?” I asked Loncar.

“No. I’m going to stay here and find out what caused that light bulb to go off over your head when you heard the address of the fire.”

The detective was getting very good at reading my expressions.

I turned and went into the living room. Loncar and Eddie followed. Eddie and I shared the sofa and Loncar sat in one of the arm chairs.

“What’s your theory, Ms. Kidd?”

“That’s Amanda Ries’ studio,” I said. “You wanted a lead? What about this: Amanda spent the night here after you left.” I sat up and my eyes darted around at various items in the living room while I thought. “I don’t know when she left. I woke up and there was a note on the table. Either I was really, really sound asleep, or she was really, really quiet. Maybe whoever set this fire thinks she lives here. Which would make Amanda the common thread, if you consider that there have now been fires at her show, in the parking lot outside of where her show was, here, and now at her studio.”

“Any thoughts on why someone would be out to get Ms. Ries?”

“None. She’s just about the most law-abiding citizen I could imagine.” Eddie nodded his head in agreement. “But it seems like somebody is keeping tabs on her whereabouts. Did you ever follow up with Santangelo Toma? About the ID that you found by the Dumpster outside of the Warehouse? Or the fire? Either fire?”

“Yes.”

“And?” A new thought hit me. “His name is San-TANGELO. Tangelos are a close cousin of oranges. Like what was used to beat me up. Are you following me?”

Eddie’s eyes went wide. “Dude, that’s creepy.”

“I know. It’s like a calling card or something.”

Loncar crossed his arms over his coat and cleared his throat. We turned our attention to him.

“We confirmed with Ms. Ries that the fruit she found around you was part of the food service for the staff and models.”

“Santangelo has a studio at Warehouse Five. He could have swiped the fruit and jumped me. It could have been him.”

“Mr. Toma is not your man.” Loncar stood up. “Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Kidd. Be careful.”

I stood up too. “Detective, I’m curious. If I actually graduated from your citizen’s police academy, would you take me more seriously?”

“Trust me, I take you very seriously.” He buttoned two buttons on his wrinkled coat and left. Eddie followed him out the door and drove off behind him. 

I wandered around the living room, straightening magazines on the table, moving coffee cups into the kitchen. At one point I loaded and started the dishwasher, and then I vacuumed.

None of it helped.

I pulled on a navy blue pea coat over my sweater and skirt and went outside. The aluminum trash can was out of the way. I crossed the driveway and looked inside. The only thing left from the fire was a small residue of ash in the bottom center. I went back inside and found a mostly empty eye shadow compact in the bathroom. I tapped the remaining clump of purple powder loose, and went back to the trash can to retrieve a sample of the ash. I was only able to come up with two pinches, but for my purposes, it would do. I clicked the eye shadow case shut.

Back inside, I went to the darkroom and pulled my old chemistry set from the baker’s rack. A giant spider, startled by the sudden activity, sprung to life from the pile of photos. I screamed, jumped backward, banged my hip on the corner of the counter behind me, and screamed again. I didn’t know where the spider had disappeared to, so I had to be quick.

The last time I used this chemistry set was when I was ten. Although my dad had high hopes of me following in his scientific footsteps, I’d traded the lure of the beaker and microscope for the mall at an early age, and the only chemicals I was interested in were the ones that promised to straighten my curly hair. The chemistry set had been shelved and forgotten. But now that I knew I was sharing space with at least one spider who could move very quickly, I was no longer interested in hanging around waiting for him to come back with friends. I swatted at the box with a broom handle as a warning to any other bugs living inside, and when nothing appeared, carried it upstairs.

On the second floor of the house, my bedroom sat to the right, the bathroom sat directly in front of me, and my sister’s old room was to my left. I’d had the notion to convert it to a closet a few months ago, lining the perimeter with cheap white floor to ceiling bookcases that housed off-season shoes, handbags, scarves, and jewelry. A rolling rod had been pushed to the back wall. It held two dozen sleeveless dresses that wouldn’t see the light of day until sometime in May.

I set the microscope on the desk and found a clean glass slide. With the tweezers that came with the set, I pinched a small amount of ash from the eye shadow compact and placed it on the glass. The glass went under the microscope, and I put my eye on the lens. Mixed with purple granules that could only be residue eye shadow were lots of gray stringy things and a long golden thread with a black stripe down the center.

I twisted around and scanned the clothes on the rack. A red sheath dress by the end of the rack had a torn hem. I pulled at a loose thread until it snapped off, and I set that on a new slide. The color was different, but the texture was similar to the gray stringy things. I found an empty beaker in the box and dropped the red thread in, and then ran downstairs for the grill lighter that I used to ignite the wicks in burned down candles. Back upstairs, I lit the red thread and watched it curl up and then dissolve into ash. I put the ash on the slide and looked at that.

It was pretty darn close to the gray stringy things.

So, the gray stringy things were threads. Then what was the golden rod with the black core? I had a hunch.

When Eddie had evened out my hair, he’d suggested that I donate what I chopped off to a wigmaker. It sounded like a good idea, the kind of thing I’d like to be thought of as doing. So I put my chopped off ponytails in a one gallon plastic bag and left it on the sink.

The other thing I’m thought of as doing is procrastinating, which is why the bag of my hair was still where I’d left it. I pulled a strand out of the bag and carried it to my desk. I knew what I wanted to see when I looked at it under the microscope.

It was the same structure as the golden thread. Which meant it wasn’t a thread. It was a strand of hair. Golden hair.

A quick Google search told me that dark hair that’s been chemically treated maintains its original color at the center. So the golden strand with the dark core came from a not-natural blond.

Clive wasn’t a natural blonde. Dante had made a comment about his hair color before the runway show.

I went back into the house and called my dad in California. We weren’t the sort of family to talk every day, but I’d learned to balance my I’m-involved-in-a-murder-investigation-again calls with questions about house maintenance so he and my mom wouldn’t worry too much about me. To them, I’d been frozen in time around ten years old. My older sister had been the one with babysitting jobs and child-in-charge responsibilities. I’d never been trusted with anything, not because I couldn’t handle it, but because, to them, I’d always be “the kid.” A shrink would probably theorize that the sense of never having grown up was why it had been so important for me to buy this particular house. I couldn’t really disagree, which was why I never started therapy.

“Hi Dad, it’s the kid,” I said.

“Hey, kid, what’s up? Everything okay in the ol’ PA?” he asked. He’d started speaking in rhyme since moving to California. I attributed it to the side effect of all that constant sun.

“I have a science question for you. Would a brown hair and a blonde hair look the same under a microscope?”

“Nope.”

“Do you mean no, or did you just say ‘nope’ because it rhymed with ‘microscope?’”

He chuckled into the phone, and then his tone turned from playful to scientist. “You have to consider different factors. Is the hair color treated? If so, how long ago? Environment plays a factor too, as does genetics. And then consider what people put on their hair: gel, mousse, hair spray—”

I wanted information, but I could already see that this could go on for a while so I cut him off. “I’m looking at a hair under a microscope. At least I think it’s a hair. It’s long and gold but it has a black core.”

“Where’d you get the microscope?”

“It’s the one you gave me for my tenth birthday.” I paused for a second, wondering if he would be impressed. My next thought was about why he’d kept it all these years. Maybe this was the very moment he’d been waiting for.

“Did you check the hair against a control group?”

“I looked at one of my own hairs under the microscope. It’s the same texture but it’s dark all the way through.”

“What’s your conclusion?”

“I think they’re both human hairs, but the gold one was dyed.”

“Does that information tell you anything?”

“It sure does. Thanks for helping me, Dad, but I have to go.”

“Hey kid?” His tone shifted from scientist back to dad. “How come you didn’t want to play with the chemistry set when I bought it for you?”

It only took a second to answer. “Because maybe I had to grow up before I saw the value in figuring things out on my own.”

29

After assuring my dad that I wasn’t in trouble, I called Amanda’s studio. No answer. I called her cell. No answer. I called Detective Loncar, who I had reprogrammed from “Fuzz” to “Partner?”

“Loncar,” he answered.

“Detective, hi, it’s Samantha Kidd. I have more information to show you.”

“I’m at the station.”

“I’m on my way.”

I grabbed the photos and placed the hair samples in a plastic bag in my handbag. I didn’t pack my childhood microscope. There was something about the Fisher-Price logo that might have made Loncar take me less seriously.

I parked in a visitor space. Even though this wasn’t the first time I’d gone to the police station to provide information, the idea of walking in still made me nervous.

Once inside, I checked in with the desk sergeant. He dialed an extension and mumbled something into the receiver. Seconds later Loncar came to the lobby to greet me. I followed him over the freshly-mopped-yet-not-really-clean linoleum tile floor, through a door marked Questioning, to his office. He sat behind the worn wooden desk and I lowered myself into the worn vinyl chair facing him. Since the last time I’d been here, a plastic bowl filled with individually wrapped sour balls sat on the corner of his desk. He caught me looking at them.

“Take one if you want. They’re sugar free. My wife’s on some kind of health kick and everything I like is off limits.”

“No, thank you.” I stared at the sour balls. Something about them bothered me.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bag of carrot sticks. “Sugar free candy and carrot sticks. This is my life.”

“Did you know if you chop up carrots and boil them with a chicken and salt and pepper you get soup?” I asked.

“I thought you didn’t cook,” he said.

I changed the subject.

“Do you think it’s strange that I keep getting involved in criminal investigations around Ribbon?”

He looked surprised, but not taken aback. “It’s not how the rest of the residents live,” he said.

“That’s not what I mean. Does it indicate some kind of personality flaw?”

“That you like to figure things out? No.” He uncrossed his arms and folded his hands on top of his desk. “I have a daughter around your age. You two”—he paused— “have some things in common. Then again, in some ways you couldn’t be more different.” He leaned back. “Are you close to your family?”

It was a good question. Living in the house where I’d grown up made me feel close to my family, but truth was, our lives were separate.