Cement Stilettos

by Diane Vallere

  “What else was stolen?” I asked. Loncar shot me a look that said he was running the investigation, not me. “Oh, come on. It’s not like you weren’t about to ask the same thing.”

  “It’s too soon to tell,” Nick said. “Everything I need to run the business is backed up on the cloud. I make my sketches by hand and the sketch pads for the last five seasons are in the cabinet where I keep previous season information.”

  “You’re saying the only thing stolen was Angela di Sotto’s file?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Why wasn’t Angela’s resume on your computer? How’d she apply for the job?”

  “She was a walk-in. Said she saw my job posting on a message board at her continuing education program.”

  “So she just showed up and you hired her?” The tiniest part of me was jealous, but not for the obvious reasons.

  I’d spent the past two years looking for work in Ribbon and had come with nine years of experience from a major New York retailer. To think that Angela had shown up, resume in hand, and talked her way into a primo job as showroom manager for a high profile designer label was annoying to say the least.

  The two men looked at me. “What? We all know I’ve had troubled employment. Maybe I just want to know what to try in case this whole Tradava thing doesn’t work out.”

  “She introduced herself and said she’d spent the past two years going to night school for her degree in small business management. She grew up in the garment industry and had a knowledge of how to calculate markup, landing costs, and general retail math. She was frustrated by trying to find a job online and thought she’d have better luck in person. She had a folder filled with positive endorsements and letters of recommendation from former employers and professors. And, not to sound superficial, but she looked the part.”

  “And you needed a showroom manager,” I said.

  “And I needed a showroom manager,” Nick repeated.

  Loncar jotted some notes in the small spiral bound notebook he carried around with him. “Mr. Taylor, I know I don’t need to tell you this, but your showroom is still off-limits. We’re going to get a team out here to secure the place in a way that will keep everybody out, and that includes you.” He looked at me and I crossed my arms over my chest. “If there’s anything you need to run your business from home, I suggest you get it now. Give me a list of whatever you take, and one of my guys will get photographs so there’s no confusion.”

  Nick looked back at the showroom. “I was supposed to leave for Italy at the end of the week. There’s no way I can get on that plane now. I’m going to lose my production window at the factories and probably an entire season of delivery. I might never recover financially.”

  As soon as Nick said the word “factories,” I flashed back to yesterday morning. Had it really only been a day and a half since we’d met with Vito on Canal Street? Was it possible Nick’s refusal to do business with him had led to a murder and an act of vandalism so egregious it could cost Nick his company?

  Nick went back inside the showroom. Loncar turned to me. “What?” he asked.

  “What what?”

  “You just reacted to something he said. I want to know what it was.”

  “It was nothing. Okay, it wasn’t nothing, but it wasn’t something, either. I was just wondering if this had anything to do with Nick telling Vito he didn’t want to use his factory yesterday morning, but I have nothing to connect those two things. No facts. You work on facts. If I’m wrong, you’re going to waste valuable time investigating a fake lead. This is what you wanted, right? For me to be a law-abiding citizen who stays out of your investigations? This is what that looks like. Me. Standing here. Not telling you things I can’t prove.”

  “Ms. Kidd, the second that theory of yours turns into fact, I want to know. Because if I find out you’re holding back on information that can lead to a mob arrest in my back yard, I’m going to arrest you myself for obstruction of justice.”

  “Detective, if I had evidence of the mob in our back yard, I would tell you. Until yesterday I didn’t even know there was mob in our back yard. So, see? You’re already one step ahead of me.”

  Nick came back with a sketchpad under his arm. Loncar directed one of his officers to take pictures of the pages inside and Nick complied. It had been a long day and a long night and I didn’t know how Nick was still standing because I was about to collapse from hunger.

  We left the police to secure the storefront. Instead of getting onto the highway, Nick turned left out and in about a quarter mile turned right into the parking lot of the Tradava strip mall.

  “You never got dinner. I’ll buy you a pizza,” he said.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Kidd, you’ve been great through this whole thing. Calm and rational and asking all the right questions. Thank you.”

  “You don’t have to thank me either.”

  “Yes, I do. There’s been more than one time in the past when you did this exact same thing and I told you not to get involved. And here it is. It’s me bringing trouble into your life.” He parked in a space not far from Brother’s Pizza and turned off the engine.

  “Will your business survive this?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. Maybe.”

  After Nick had taken the business over from his dad, he’d licensed his name for financial backing. A couple of years ago he’d bought back distribution and reclaimed ownership of all aspects of the company. It had been a slow build from there. Instead of his shoes being in every major high end retailer, scaling back production had meant his accounts were cherry-picked. Tradava was one of them. He’d never told me his debt to income ratio, but I’d assumed his company was healthy. Maybe I’d been wrong.

  “When I bought back distribution of my label, I put everything I had into the company. This is my make-it-or-break-it year. I thought things were on the right track but they’re not.” He looked at me. “That wasn’t the life I wanted to offer you when I asked you to marry me.”

  “Is that why you’ve been different since I said yes? I thought you had second thoughts.”

  “No—don’t ever think that. Okay?”

  The relationship fears that I’d felt yesterday morning bubbled below the surface. I knew Nick didn’t expect me to give up my world for him, but I could tell his sudden lack of footing in his own world caused him to question bigger issues. We needed to talk about what this meant.

  “Me saying yes was never about you offering me a life,” I said. “It was about you offering me a commitment and a companion. I already have a life. I thought it would be nice to share it with you—no matter what happens.”

  He smiled. “Come on. Let’s get you that pizza.”

  I opened my door and climbed out. A man in a streaked white apron came out of Brothers and looked our way. I recognized him as Jimmy, one of the two brothers who hand-tossed my pizzas in high school and had since inherited the shop from their dad. It was late and not terribly busy and I guessed he had arranged for someone else to lock up so he could cut out early.

  I shut my side of the truck and met Nick around the back of the truck. “Hey, Jimmy,” I called out. “You’re not closing early, are you?”

  Jimmy didn’t answer. He strode right up to Nick and punched him in the face.

  10

  Tuesday night, even later

  The punch clipped Nick’s cheek. His head whipped to the side and he put his hands out onto the back of his truck to keep his balance. He balled up his own fists and answered Jimmy’s punch with an uppercut of his own. Jimmy’s head snapped back and he swung again. Nick ducked. He put his hand on his cheek and faced Jimmy. The two men circled each other, shoulders hunched, elbows bent, hands fisted.

  “Get outta here,” Jimmy said. “We don’t need your business.” He looked at me. I was pretty sure my pizza habit had all but paid for their recent renovation. “You back with this guy?”

  I nodded.


  “I liked the other one better.” He spit on the ground by Nick’s back tires, glared at Nick, and then walked away.

  Nick pulled off his glove and held his hand to his face. “Was that about you?”

  “Me? No. How could it have to do with me? I’m his best customer.”

  “Here,” he said. He pulled out his wallet and handed me a twenty. “I’ll wait in the truck.”

  “I don’t need a pizza that bad. Put that away and let’s get out of here.”

  Even though my car was still parked at Nick’s, my house was less than a mile from the Brother’s parking lot. Considering the evening we’d had, it was the logical destination. Nick pulled the truck into the garage and we went inside.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Not really. You eat.”

  “How about ice for your eye?”

  “I don’t need ice. I need a shower.” He went upstairs.

  He was avoiding me and the questions I felt sure he knew I wanted to ask. I went into the kitchen. I slathered some butter on a piece of bread and ate it while standing up. Logan joined me and I tore off a second piece and put it in his bowl.

  It had been an evening of surprises, starting with the vandalism and ending with the fight. I’d never seen Nick fight. I’d hardly ever seen him mad. Sure, there were a few moments where his anger had been right below the surface, but that was normal for everybody. Tonight was different.

  For someone who appeared to be in control of his life and his business, he’d been pushed to his limits. I couldn’t begin to imagine what made Jimmy punch him, but I understood why Nick had punched back. He was defending himself, not against a pizza store owner, but against unknown forces that were trying to knock him down. Jimmy had simply put a face on the situation. But the question remained: why in the name of all the cheesy goodness that came from a 500-degree pizza oven would Jimmy slug Nick?

  I put away the bread and loaded the dishwasher. The water upstairs turned off. It was going on eleven and I had to get up early for work the next day. I climbed the stairs and went into the bedroom to change into pajamas. The bathroom door opened and Nick came out. He was bare-chested, a towel wrapped around his waist, another towel draped around his neck. His curly brown hair was shiny with moisture.

  “You look like Rocky Balboa,” I said. I reached up and traced my fingers over the bruise that was forming under his eye. “Does it hurt?”

  His eyes grew dark and he leaned down and kissed me. My hand was still on his cheek. His kiss turned into a nip of my lower lip, and then a longer kiss. His hands reached down to my navy knit dress and felt over the parts of me where the fabric clung the most. I moved my hands up onto his wet hair and he pulled my dress off over my head.

  This was unexpected.

  We advanced from standing to laying, from kissing to—well, that’s none of your business—and soon, our energy spent, we both lay back on the bed. I arranged the covers over us and rested against my pillow. The last words Nick had spoken were, “I need a shower.” While our few dalliances thus far had left no evidence that he was a dirty talker, I wouldn’t have minded a phrase or two after the fact just to let me know what he was thinking.

  I pulled my nightgown out from under my pillow (habit from childhood) and slipped it over my head. Nick pulled on his boxers and undershirt. He lay back and pulled me into a half embrace. In a whisper that was almost inaudible, he said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Kidd.” He pressed his lips against the side of my head. I rested my arm across his chest, closed my eyes, and fell asleep moments later.

  I woke up alone. I’d left my phone in my handbag in the living room and had no idea what time it was. I pulled a red zip-front hoodie on over my nightgown and went downstairs. Nick was in the kitchen making breakfast. He wore the jeans he’d had on last night and his white undershirt. The bruise on his cheek had turned purple and a greenish-yellow shade discolored the tender area directly under his eye. It was oddly sexy, a fact that I kept to myself.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I’m making you pancakes. Can you handle that? I know it’s not your normal Pop-Tart breakfast of champions.”

  “I didn’t know I had pancake batter,” I said.

  “There was a box of Bisquick in the cupboard.”

  “I think my parents left that before they moved out.”

  Nick looked at the stack of pancakes he’d already made, pursed his lips as if considering the implications of using two-year-old dry goods, and shrugged. He handed me a plate and pointed me to the table. “I had some and I survived. You’ll be fine. Sit. Eat. Then go get ready for work.”

  “But my car is at your house.”

  “I’ll drop you off. When I pick you up after work, I’ll take you to my place and you can drive it home.”

  “But I need my car today.”

  “Why?”

  I set the plate down and turned back to Nick. “I have a morning filled with appointments to check out factories for the photo shoot I pitched to Tradava. After you told me not to do business with Vito, I had to come up with a new plan.”

  “Kidd, I don’t like it.”

  “I already got approval from Pam Trotter.”

  “That was before the murder and the vandalism.”

  “I can’t just tell my boss that I’m not pursuing the project because my fiancé changed his mind.” I searched his face and saw only concern there.

  “You mentioned your project before but you didn’t tell me the details.”

  “Models in colorful tweed suits shot against the stark backdrop of a factory or warehouse. Juxtapose the glamour of ladylike dressing with the cold emptiness of exposed concrete and cement.”

  His body language relaxed and he smiled. “You’re right. It’s a good idea. But why the rush? The pre-fall catalog won’t hit until July. You’ve got a couple of months to set this up.”

  “That’s the thing. You know Carl Collins?”

  “Everybody in Ribbon knows Carl. He’s the town nuisance.”

  “He’s been bugging me for an interview, something about Ribbon’s own Connie Blair or something. I’ve been blowing him off. But then I thought, if I could get him to do the interview with a staged version of the photo shoot in the background behind us, then Tradava would get extra exposure. They’d be the first catalog to showcase the fall trend, they could take advance orders on the merchandise, and if we style it with black tights, gloves, and sunglasses, we could probably get an uptick in sales on those categories now.”

  “What about the shoes?”

  I hadn’t had a chance to ask Nick about the shoe production, and with the new troubles from last night, I wasn’t sure about the timing.

  “The easiest thing to do would be to use whatever we have in the sample closet,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Or you could have asked me to order the samples.”

  “I was a shoe buyer, Nick. I know shoe samples cost about a thousand dollars each when you factor in the expense of the factory shutting down mass production to make one pair. I wasn’t going to ask you to take that kind of financial hit because I needed a favor. Not now.”

  “Okay, then think about this: if I don’t have my factory produce something, then I’m going to lose my slot in the production calendar. Every other designer who uses that factory will get made before me and my spring collection will be produced in April. My order will ship in May and get marked down in June. There’s no way my inventory will sell through in a month. I’ll either pay a fortune in gross margin guarantees or take a loss when the retailers return their unsold inventory for credit on next season. I know you were a shoe buyer. None of this should be news to you.”

  “So either way you’re screwed.”

  “No, either way it’s my problem to figure out. Your problem is getting to those appointments and lining up a backdrop for your awesome photo shoot idea.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Take my truck. I’ll meet you at the store when you’re done and we’ll get yo
ur car. Deal?”

  “What are you going to do all day?”

  “Can I use your computer?”

  “Sure.”

  “Fine. Considering I have a black eye, I doubt I’ll inspire a lot of confidence in person. I’ll set up camp in your office and do what I can from here.”

  Tradava was less than a mile from my house, and if the temperature wasn’t in the twenties, I might have let the voice inside my head convince me to offer to walk. Even Samantha 2.0 had her limits. I ate my pancakes, noticed no immediate side effects, and went upstairs. I took a quick shower and dressed in a blue jumpsuit and black Chelsea boots. I hooked two skinny black belts together and wound them around my waist, did a quick blow dry, kissed Nick good-bye, and left.

  11

  Wednesday morning

  Thanks to the impromptu bedroom action last night, I’d forgotten to plug in my cell phone. I drove to Factory Row on Canal Street by memory, and then asked Siri to get me the final quarter mile. Driving Nick’s white pick-up truck required a slight adjustment from how I drove my small convertible. I liked the perspective of being above most other cars, but the condition of the roads out this way were subpar, and by the time I arrived at the first factory, I was fairly certain I’d picked up some debris that was now stuck to the undercarriage.

  The parking lot was empty. I climbed out of the truck and bent down to look underneath the truck. A plastic grocery store bag was stuck to a metal bar that connected the tires. I knew there was a name for that bar but cars weren’t my thing. I squatted and tried to knock the plastic bag loose, but it remained stuck. The parking lot was gravel and broken cement.

  I took off my coat and tossed it down on the ground, and then sat on the lining and wriggled under the car with my legs sticking out. I grabbed the bag with both hands and it tore.

  “Excuse me, this is a place of business. You can’t work on your car here,” said a female voice.

  “Hold on, I’m almost done,” I said. I gave the plastic one last yank. A round metal canister came loose and something dark dripped onto my face. Motor oil, I suspected.