Suede to Rest by Diane Vallere

anybody wanted to come out and say it, it seemed they weren’t welcoming me with open arms. At least one thing was certain: The Senior Patrol was keeping an eye on me. The fact offered little solace.
    Once inside, I found the kittens back in their box. The orange one stretched a paw out and yawned. I scooped each up and kissed their heads, then set them on top of the cutting table. The tabby had clear blue eyes and a tiny pink nose. The other was his twin except in shades of gray, as if someone had printed a photo from a printer that was low on toner.
    I left them on top of the cutting station and stripped off the motor oil–stained clothes I’d been wearing. They were destined for the trash. I would have loved to bundle up in flannel pajamas and a thick terry-cloth robe, but my shopping priorities earlier that day had been less about warmth and more about style. I pulled the black silk nightgown over my head and slipped my arms into the sleeves of a matching duster. Not warm enough. I tore the tags off of the black sweatshirt and zipped myself into it. Next I withdrew the other damp purchases from the shopping bag. With a length of ribbon from the wall of trims and buttons, I created a makeshift clothesline and hung the rest of my purchases: a pair of black pants, a pair of black skinny jeans, one black tube skirt, one black turtleneck, one black tunic. Surrounded by the most exotic fabrics in the most unusual colors, my wardrobe of cheap black garments looked as though the life had been sucked out of them. I remembered what Charlie had said earlier when I’d asked her where I could get some clothes.
You’re asking the wrong questions.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I was.
    I flipped to a blank page at the back of Aunt Millie’s sales ledger, found a stubby pencil in the drawer of the wrap stand, and scribbled
Mr. Pickers/Senior Patrol/fabric store/connection?
I chewed on the eraser of the pencil as I stared at the page. Why had the murderer tied the blue suede around Mr. Pickers’s head? To incriminate me, or to send a message that the murder was connected to the store? I didn’t know enough about any of the things I’d written down to know what to make of them, and it was frustrating. Somebody around here had to have answers, and I was going to find them.
    I flipped a few pages forward to another blank page and doodled a random circular pattern that matched my swirling thoughts. Before long, I sketched around it, a shoulder, a sleeve, a dress.
    Drawing clothes came easily to me, easier than it was to create a pattern and turn the sketch into a real live garment. I simply pictured one element and built a dress around it. That’s one of the reasons I was the concept designer at To The Nines. I had the ideas needed to conceive our collection each season, even if the collection was a batch of brightly colored dresses with gaudy embellishments, perfect for beauty pageants and proms. Someone else took my sketches to make patterns so the sewing team could turn them into reality.
    People had always liked to watch me sketch, to tweak a line here, add a feather or a brooch, color it in with accents of gold, silver, or an array of brightly imagined stones. When I first imagined a concept, I escaped into a fantasy world of art deco inspiration. I could close my eyes and see the world that existed in the movies I loved from the thirties, then add them to my drawing.
    As much as people were impressed with my talent, I was equally impressed when the sewing team blocked out a pattern on a bust form with flexible tape or draped a mannequin with fabric and turned it into what it was that I’d drawn. It was Giovanni who dumbed down my designs, claiming that they would cost too much in production. “That’s nice, but this isn’t the postwar thirties. Use half as much fabric and lose the buttons. Zippers are cheaper.”
    Once, when I picked up a bolt of blue sateen from our supplier, he