Some Like It Haute: A Humorous Fashion Mystery (Style & Error Book 4) Read Free Page A

replaced the numbness of being dismissed, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. My panic sensor was on red alert. I turned around to see if there was anybody else in the hallway with me. There wasn’t. I pushed forward and then out the exit doors, head down. I was almost to my car.
    And then a flicker of light caught my eye. I turned to look at the source, and quicker than you can say “supermodel” a trail of fire ignited a path from the edge of the parking lot to where I was standing. I jumped away, too slow. The flame licked my boot and climbed the hem of my pants. I swatted at the flame.
    A figure bundled up in a puffy down coat stepped out of the shadows. I couldn’t make out if it was a man or woman.  They swung a lumpy bag that connected with my midsection and I doubled over. “Stay out of this,” said a distorted voice. The person swung the bag again. I fell to the ground and curled into a ball. I watched as the person ignited the bag with a match. The eerie orange light cast shadows over a face mostly hidden by a thick scarf.
    As I lay on the ground, the person swung the flaming bag at me again and again. The fire went out, but the beating continued. After several hits, the person opened the bag and dumped the contents on me. I rolled to the side, my face wet with the tears of pain.
     

3
    “And that’s where I found you,” said Amanda from her seat next to the hospital bed. She wrung her hands as she spoke. She had just told us about finding me curled up in the parking lot, surrounded by burnt fruit, unable to stand or get help for myself.
    She’d done the right thing, calling 911 to get an ambulance for me, and not letting anyone else into the area. When the EMTs arrived, I’d been taken to the hospital, where I relayed what little I could remember to a police officer after being poked, prodded, and X-rayed. My own version had been told under the influence of painkillers, and may have included a few extra details, but the overall gist was the same. I’d been attacked in the parking lot between the Warehouse Five exit and my car. I’d been beaten with a bag of oranges and set on fire. I’d been left to die.
    And now, thanks to Amanda, I lay recovering from internal bruising and second degree burns. My left hand was wrapped in a gauze bandage and it hurt to take deep breaths.
    “What time did you find her?” Eddie asked.
    “It was a little after eleven. Tiny was late getting back with the shoes. I went out to the parking lot when some of the girls left. I wanted to see what was taking so long.”
    Eddie voiced my thoughts. “So nobody knows what happened.”
    “No.”
    I sat up and spoke in a raspy voice. “Somebody set me on fire and beat me. That’s what happened.”
    “That’s what you keep saying, but nobody saw anything. Tiny had to go meet Nick—” Amanda paused mid-sentence and looked at me. A tension-riddled pause ballooned into the small hospital room while every one of us wondered if I would react to the mention of Nick.
    For the past five weeks, the name “Nick” had been a largely unspoken four-letter-word. Our breakup had been unexpected; my ability to move on had been overestimated. The week I let it all sink in, I’d bought out the local grocery store’s supply of frozen chicken tenders and subsisted on them, vanilla ice cream, and waffles for a week. I gained seven pounds, dropped out of society, and spent the majority of my time with my cat.
    I love my cat, but there are some who might say my behavior was not entirely healthy. Still, there was no way I was going to let Amanda, Nick’s maybe-former girlfriend, know how I felt.
    Eddie took control of the conversation. “You said Tiny was gone a long time?” he asked.
    “It seemed like a long time, but that’s because we were at a standstill until she got back. I mean, there were little things for us to do like tack seams and steam samples and go over the order of the looks, but I was keeping the models there