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

thought he’d want was to ratchet up the romance factor between us.
    “Don’t work too hard,” he said. “Call me if you finish early.”
    I tried to think of something to say but came up short. A few seconds passed, and the screen indicated that the call had dropped. I punched the steering wheel and the horn sounded. The driver in front of me rolled down his window and gave me the finger. I hollered back at him even though he’d done nothing wrong.
    Good times.
    I arrived at the library and circled the block three times until a parking space opened up. I ignored every impulse that told me to call Nick back and do damage control and forced myself to go inside. The sooner I figured out what Pritchard was up to, the sooner everything could get back to normal.
    Despite the relatively safe feeling of the library, I still looked to my left and right before approaching the front desk. I felt watched, vulnerable. The librarian barely looked up at me when I approached. “I’d like to reserve a computer,” I said. I handed her my library card. “Preferably one in the back.”
    She punched a few buttons on the keyboard. “Second floor, by the restroom. Here’s your password. There’s a one-hour time limit. If you want more time, come back to me and we’ll do this all over again.”
    My cell phone made a noise for an incoming text. She looked at it. “No cell phones allowed. Turn it off or you’ll have to leave.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I switched the ringer to silent and headed off to my temporary office.
    It took a few minutes to figure out the library’s search system and access the online databases that cross referenced articles from newspapers and magazines. In the past I’d had to locate issues of magazines and hunt them down on the shelves of the library archives. Since then, most periodicals had been digitized and I could find whatever I needed from the relative comfort of the plastic library chair. No wonder they enforced a one-hour limit.
    The first person I looked up was Jennie Mae Tome. She and her walk-in closet seemed to fit all too well with the project at Retrofit. She was as good a place to start my research as any.
    I pulled my small white lined notepad and Pritchard’s pen out and scrolled through mentions in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Glamour, pausing periodically to take notes.
    Jennie Mae Tome was a wealthy retiree who had taken up residence in Ribbon, Pennsylvania after leaving the fashion industry in the early part of the millennium. As a teen, she’d gotten her start as a model, but that wasn’t to become her career or her legacy. She’d been quick to spot ill-fitting garments on the other models before catalog shoots or runway shows, and learned to make adjustments with whatever was handy: tape, band-aids, bobby pins, and ultimately her own makeshift sewing kit. When one designer spotted her lowering the hem of a mini skirt, he fired her. There’d been no time to undo her alteration before the show, though, and the mini—now a midi—had walked the runway of the local ladies’ country club spring fashion show. The audience, delighted at the notion that there was an option for women whose knees appeared older than their well-cared-for faces and youthful wardrobes, placed orders for the skirt that broke records. The designer spent the next two days tracking down Jennie Mae Tome from the contact information on file with the modeling agency that employed her. It would have taken less time if Jennie Mae hadn’t lied about her age or her address.
    Jennie Mae quickly went from minor alterations to being asked for her opinion on new designs. Not one to conceive of clothes from scratch, she found it easier to tweak existing patterns than come up with entirely new ideas. She made samples of shirts with exaggerated sleeve fullness, culottes with wider legs and skirts that dropped to the floor. Her suggested tweaks to existing designs contributed to the success of many collections. While