Some Like It Haute: A Humorous Fashion Mystery (Style & Error Book 4) by Diane Vallere Read Free Book Online Page B

was going to go the distance.
    “Tiny, I’m not going to let this go until I have some answers.”
    “If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for Amanda.”
    It was at that moment that Amanda appeared from the kitchen. “No, Tiny, you’re wrong. If anybody can help me, it’s Samantha.”
    “You’re making a big mistake,” Tiny said. She grabbed a cross-body nylon bag that was propped along the wall and stormed out the front door without a coat. I watched through the front window as she hunched her shoulders against the wind and climbed into a black SUV then drove away.
    Amanda sat in the leather chair behind the large glass-topped desk. A vase filled with orange roses like the ones at her runway show sat on the corner. She held out a white, business-sized envelope. “This is probably what you came here for. Your check. Take it. You earned it.”
    I took the envelope, folded it in half, and tucked it into my handbag. “Amanda, I didn’t have anything to do with the fire,” I said. “But I’m not going to forget that somebody jumped me.”
    She stared at me with a curiosity, like I was a specimen in a Petri dish. “I don’t know who attacked you,” Amanda said to me. “But you must know something that I don’t. Something that will help me figure out what’s going on.”
    “The way Tiny just stormed out of here. Was that normal?” I asked.
    “What’s normal these days? I found you barely conscious in the parking lot outside of Warehouse Five. Twenty-four hours later my show went up in flames. It’s hard to believe the two aren’t connected. Tiny’s convinced you had something to do with the fire. When you pulled up out front, she wanted me to call the cops.”
    “What possible reason could I have for wanting to make myself look like a victim and then burn down your show?”
    Amanda  opened a different drawer and pulled out a tri-folded piece of paper. “Maybe you should take a look at this.”
    She held the paper between her first two fingers the way Mae West would have held up an unlit cigarette. I took the paper and unfolded it. In mismatched letters that looked like they’d been cut from magazines, glued to the page, and then run through a copier, the paper said:
    AMANDA RIES: BURN, BABY, BURN!
     

8
    I sank into one of the chairs across from her desk. “When did you get this?” I asked.
    “The first one came about a month ago.”
    “The first one? There are more?”
    Amanda dropped her eyes to the glass desk top. She pulled her sleeve over her hand and wiped in circles at a ring from a mug that hadn’t been set on a coaster. When she finished, she pulled the bottom drawer of her desk open and pulled out a small stack of white papers bound with a yellow rubber band. When she looked at me again, her face was the picture of worry.
    “So far there are six.”
    “May I?” I asked. She nodded and I took the pile. After pulling the rubber band off, I flipped through the pages. Each one held a threat spelled out in mismatched letters like the first. I ran my finger over the smooth paper. I couldn’t picture Fonts.com having an option that looked like a pre-technology cut-and-paste blackmail note. Whoever had painstakingly assembled these pages of threats had access to fashion magazines and a lot of time on their hands. Whoever had done this was making a point. I doubted it was coincidental that fashion was Amanda’s business.
    “Take them. I don’t want to look at them anymore,” she said.
    “Does Tiny know about the letters?” I asked.
    “No.”
    “Do the police?”
    “Whatever you might think of me, you need to know one thing. I am remarkably normal. When I get a cold, I go to the doctor. When I drive through a shady part of town, I lock the doors and roll up the windows. And if somebody sent me threats that look like the work of someone with a screw loose, I’d go to the cops. I don’t share your attraction to danger.”
    “I wish people would stop saying