Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) Read Online Free Page B

storefront for a local bakery. Every once in awhile I imagined the scent of various and sundry breads coming from the back of the offices where Nancie Townsend had set up the boardroom. During particularly long meetings, I would have paid good money for someone to show up and bake us a couple of loaves of sourdough.
    Once the bakery had moved out and Nancie had obtained the keys, she’d taken it upon herself to convert the property to a business. The permanent walls had been painted yellow, the linoleum tiled floors had been covered in throw rugs, the counter had been taken out and replaced with moveable walls that created the perception of individual offices. The intern who worked as our receptionist and general Johnny-on-the-spot sat at a small desk out front. There weren’t a lot of jobs out there that included shopping on eBay for copies of Vogue in mint condition, and while I knew our rotating door of interns were unpaid, I suspected the sheer novelty of the job kept local fashion students in line for the next vacant position.
    Keys jangled outside of the offices. Moments later, Nancie arrived in my doorway.
    “Sam, great, you’re here.” One by one she pushed the sleeves of her black and white blazer up over her forearms. “I got a concerned message from Pritchard. I was worried that you might have tried to go with him today.”
    “I haven’t seen Pritchard all morning,” I said truthfully. “Didn’t you say he had an appointment with a collector?”
    “Yes. Local clotheshorse. Pritchard wanted to see what she still had before acting on behalf of Retrofit , but he heard rumors that her collection was worth a look. He might persuade her to loan it to us for a special feature.”
    The garments that I’d seen were in pristine condition. The vibe was exactly what we needed. With the correct accessories, we could style the outfits two ways: as they were shown forty years ago, and how to wear them today. It would be unlike anything the fashion magazines did, because they focused exclusively on new collections. And I was capable of styling it myself.
    “I have an idea.” Forgetting about Prichard for the moment, I outlined the concept to Nancie. “What if we had a feature that broke down exact items from the Seventies—maybe even the complete head to toe look that a designer showed on the runway or how it was featured in Vogue —as close as we can get it.” I made a quick sketch of a female figure on the left half of a piece of paper and wrote “Literal Translation” under it. “On the right, we take one key item from the look and style it for now. Pair it with jeans, or leggings, or all white. Modernize the jewelry, hair, makeup. Make it today.” Under the right sketch, I wrote “Modern Translation.” I pushed the paper toward Nancie.
    She picked it up and looked back and forth between the two sketches. With the hand not holding the paper, she flicked the page, leaving a dent in the middle. “Perfection!” she said. “This is exactly what we need to give our magazine its own identity. I’m going to call Pritchard and tell him. Depending on what this collector has, he can pull looks and shoot them so we can at least have placeholders before we put them on a figure.”
    “But don’t you think that’s a two person job? To help identify what we should and shouldn’t use?”
    “Sam, Pritchard is a Godsend. I can’t expect you to run all over town on a project of this magnitude. Let him do the legwork while you get started on editorial.” She left my cubicle muttering, “Dream team.”
    I bit back the response that sprung to my lips. I knew my idea was a good one. I knew it would set Retrofit apart from the other print publications out there and could possibly even be what made our first issue a collector’s item. But the person who put the outfits together would get stylist credit on the pages of the magazine. The person who wrote the editorial would have one listing in the front on a page