Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) by Diane Vallere Page A

There.
    Which brings us to reason #4: No good can come from spying while you’re buzzed on bourbon.
    I looked around. No signs of Mr. Charles. No signs of Pritchard Smith. No signs of Jennie Mae Tome. If everybody was so busy, where were they?
    I opened the door that led to the staircase that led to the attic and listened. Nothing. If Pritchard was up there, then he was doing a very good job of pretending he wasn’t. And why would he want to do that? Because he knew I was there and he didn’t want me to catch him doing whatever it was that he was there to do.
    Slowly, I crept up the second set of stairs, careful to keep my footsteps silent as I ascended. I wanted the element of surprise when I reached the attic and discovered him.
    But as it turns out, the element of surprise was for me. Because the fabulous attic-turned-walk-in-closet that I’d seen the first time I was there, jammed with racks, dressers, and trunks of vintage fashion, was empty.
     

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