Cement Stilettos

by Diane Vallere

“Dude. If something happens to Nick, I’ll bring you a casserole.”

  “That’s not it. I went to Angela’s house yesterday. After I left Tradava but before I went to Nick’s apartment. I wanted to pay my respects.”

  “You don’t know how to make a casserole,” he said warily.

  “I bought a frozen lasagna at the grocery store. It’s the thought that counts, right?”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Okay. I thought they’d be in mourning, you know? Somber. But it was like ladies’ night in. Angela’s sister Connie was there with her friends—two of them were the women who you met today. And an older lady. Connie called her Mama Blum and said she raised Angela. They were drinking Lambrusco and laughing and they called me ‘Nicky’s girl,’ like Nick was a part of some club of theirs that I know nothing about. They even said that.”

  Eddie leaned forward with interest. “They said what?”

  “Connie said Nick was practically family.”

  “Do you remember her exact words?”

  “Why? That’s the gist.”

  “I might need more than the gist. What did she say?”

  “It was kind of vague. She said when Nick hired Angela they treated him as part of the family.”

  “Don’t you realize what she was saying?”

  “That they’ve taken him under their wing because he was Angela’s boss?” The willful ignorance in my voice was obvious, even to me.

  “You ever heard of the Cosa Nostra?”

  “Sure. It’s the clothing line of that guy who won Project Runway season three.”

  “The Cosa Nostra is the mafia. The literal translation from Italian means, ‘our thing.’ It’s also known as ‘the family.’”

  “That had to be coincidence. Right? I mean, you don’t think...” I’d been trying as hard as I could to avoid seeing the unavoidable conclusion. “Is it really possible that all this time Nick’s been connected to the mob?”

  14

  Wednesday, after work

  “If Nick was a wiseguy, I’d know it. Wouldn’t I know it?” I asked. I thought back to the person who’d called Nick’s showroom the morning I found Angela’s body. Your boyfriend is not a nice man. Why would someone say that? “It’s not possible that I don’t know this.”

  “He is Italian,” Eddie said. I glared at him and he grinned. “Joke! Nick’s a good guy. I know that and you know that. Angela’s family probably meant exactly what you thought, that they treated him like family because he was her boss.”

  “Yes, but he acted like he’d never met them. And they acted like he was the son they never had.” In terms of disconnect, it was pretty big.

  “Loncar told me Angela had ties to the mafia. If she did, then Nick could be in a kind of trouble he doesn’t even know about. Angela could have been using his showroom as a front for something.” I told Eddie about Angela’s personal files having been stolen. “But now that I’ve got this interview lined up with Carl Collins, I don’t know how I’m going to keep tabs on what’s going on with Nick.”

  “Good luck with that.” Eddie stood up to leave. He stopped by the door and turned back. “Are you still on track for the photo shoot?”

  “I haven’t had time to even think about that. Nick’s situation comes first.”

  “You might not be able to do your job and put Nick’s situation first,” he said. “This situation might force you to make a choice.”

  “I’ve known Nick through his business for eleven years—even before we were together. These people aren’t that good at hiding their ties, are they? He asked me to marry him. Was I about to marry into the mob? I mean, just yesterday he told me his life was an open book. He wouldn’t have said that if he had secrets like this, would he?”

  “You wouldn’t think so.”

  “He added me to his car registration and he told me not to knock when I come to his place. He seems to trust me. But I can’t help thinking there’s something he doesn’t want me to know.”

  “Funny how things work out. Nick finally accepts the thing that makes you go digging around into other people’s problems and this time the problem is his.” He leaned back. “All I can say is don’t drop the ball on that photo shoot.”

  “Why are you focusing on that?”

  “You’re officially part of the Tradava fishbowl. They’re watching you...” He wiggled his fingers on either side of his head, grinned again, and left.

  Great. I finally get noticed for my work and not my extracurricular activities, just when I needed to fly under the radar. If senior management and the store owners found out I was nosing around the mafia, especially during working hours, then I was going to be back out of a job for good. I needed help and I didn’t know where to get it.

  In past situations like this, I’d sometimes relied on the experience of Dante Lestes, my friend Cat’s brother. But Dante’s skillz as a private eye were part of a package deal that included innuendo, dangerous situations, and occasional fooling around. Now that I was engaged, I was less in the market for what Dante offered. Cat had told me that Dante didn’t believe Nick and I would work out, but I suspected that had more to do with his desire to keep me in a state of unbalance. I hadn’t given much thought to Dante since slipping Nick’s mother’s heirloom ring onto my ring finger, but I knew now that, despite whatever help Dante was capable of providing, he wasn’t the right person to ask.

  I was going to have to figure out a way to snoop while it looked to the rest of the world like I was going about my life. And there was pretty much only one person I could think of who repeatedly badgered me for information. Carl Collins from the Ribbon Times.

  Before I had a change of mind/heart/attitude/crisis of conscience, I called him.

  “Collins,” he said.

  “Collins, it’s Kidd.” I paused for a moment. “Samantha Kidd.”

  “Too bad. I was expecting James Bond. Whatcha got for me?”

  “I don’t really have anything for you right now.”

  “What about our interview? I’m only going through with the whole photo shoot thing so I can get the details on this latest case of yours. Mob ties to a shoe designer. I’m thinking ‘What a Heel: Shoe Designer Brings Mob to Ribbon’ or ‘Scuff Marks: Local Shoe Designer Involved in Dirty Business.’”

  “Knock it off, Carl.”

  “You’re right, those titles need work. But it looks to me like your future husband stepped in something and it sure doesn’t smell like a rose.”

  “You talked to Nick?” I asked. “When?”

  “This afternoon. He didn’t tell you? I went to your house earlier today. Thought you were bailing on me. Found him instead. Good thing, too. I got a nice firsthand account of what happened at his showroom last night.”

  “He talked to you about the vandalism? On or off the record?”

  “Taylor’s not an idiot. He knows I’m press and he knows how it works. Would have been better if somebody called me from the scene, but I’ll take what I can get. Who gave him the shiner?”

  “Why didn’t you ask him?” Carl was quiet. “You did ask him and he didn’t tell you. What makes you think I will?”

  “It’s called investigation. Ask questions, nose around a bit. Sometimes the best information turns up in the unlikeliest place.”

  It bothered me how on the money Carl was about that. “You said you were in my house?”

  “Yeah. Took a peek in your trash can. You really like pretzels.”

  “That’s hardly a scoop.” I was about to close down my computer when Nick’s email with the pictures of the factories caught my eye. “I’m calling with an update on the interview. I was hoping to have things lined up by now but I’m having some trouble securing a factory setting. We might have to postpone until next week.”

  “Sorry, Charlie, no dice. My editor approved the interview, the photographer, and the cover story of the Sunday Style Section. Said it’s been awhile since we did something on fashion, but it’s this Friday or not at al
l.”

  “That’s in two days!” I said.

  “I know. You should have thought about that before you pitched me the idea.”

  To recap: I had a great idea, pitched it to both the local paper and my bosses, got everyone on board, and now had forty-eight hours to make it happen. My employer, duly impressed with my idea, was pulling strings so I could use a factory owned by a businessman of questionable background right about the same time I’d learned that a group of mob wives were throwing a fundraiser for my fiancé.

  And on top of everything, I was going to have to stop eating at my favorite pizza joint.

  I closed down my computer and left the office. Nick was waiting for me in the shoe department, talking to Pam.

  “Samantha, I knew we could count on you,” Pam said.

  I looked back and forth between their faces. “What did I do now?”

  She laughed. “Nick said he can get us the shoes for the photo shoot.”

  “But the interview is in two days and you can’t get a sample here by then, can you?”

  “You can use the sample from Christmas,” he said. “Remember? The forty pair of shoes I gave you?”

  “Those were for me,” I said. Whoops, that was definitely not Samantha 2.0. “But you’re right. Perfect solution.”

  “Outstanding,” Pam said. She put her hand on his arm. “Always a pleasure, Nick.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine.” They did the air-kiss thing and Pam left.

  “The last time we talked, I hadn’t formally asked you about the shoes,” I said.

  “Forget about it.”

  “Did you say ‘Fuhgeddaboudit’?”

  “I said forget about it.” He gave me a funny smile that suggested he wasn’t sure if I was making a joke. “I don’t want you to worry. I called in a favor to the factory in Italy and they already have the pattern for the new platform pump and they assured me they have plenty of black suede in inventory. That might be the only shoe in my collection for fall, so I’m going to need all the exposure I can get.” He put his hand on the small of my back and guided me toward the employee exit.

  I gave Nick his keys and he drove us to his apartment. My car was where I left it, in the visitor space in the underground parking garage. He parked his truck in his reserved space and we got out.

  He walked around the front of the truck, put his finger under my chin, and tipped my face up so we were inches apart and he was staring directly into my eyes. “Would you like to come to the apartment? Get a raincheck on a home cooked meal? I seem to recall Loncar’s call last night interrupted us before you had your weekly requirement of meatballs.” He leaned down and kissed me. “I fed Logan and cleaned his litterbox before I came to get you. He’s set for the night.”

  “Sure,” I said, temporarily distracted from my newfound concerns over Nick’s potential mafia ties. He slipped his warm hand into the collar of my jumpsuit and cradled my neck, this time kissing me a little less innocently. I kissed him back until the incongruous backdrop of cars whizzing past us in the parking garage became too hard to ignore.

  I pulled away from him. “We should get upstairs.”

  “My dad’s upstairs.”

  “And half of your neighbors are down here. Either way, I’d prefer a little privacy.”

  He draped his arm around my shoulder and led me to the elevator. Minutes later, we entered his apartment. The kitchen smelled of melted cheese and garlic.

  “Hey, you two,” Nick’s dad said. We had yet to agree on an appropriate title for me to call him, so for the time being, we were hanging out in “hey” territory.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Nick stifled a smile and shook his head.

  “Whoa! Nice shiner. What did you do?”

  “It’s nothing,” Nick said.

  Nick Senior looked to me for an explanation.

  “I think it was a case of mistaken identity,” I said.

  “You were there?”

  Nick shot me a look that clearly said I was not supposed to tell his dad about his having been assaulted in a parking lot by the owner of a pizza store. It did seem like a possible don’t-tell-my-dad story, and it was nice to discover Nick had one of those instead of it always being me.

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds it may incriminate me,” I said instead.

  “I have ways of making you talk,” Nick Senior said.

  I pantomimed zipping my lips and locking them, and then tossing the key over my shoulder. Nick rolled his eyes. “I suspect you’re going to crack the second he leverages the garlic twists against the truth.” He left us alone in the kitchen.

  “There are garlic twists?” I asked.

  “Not for you, there’s not,” Senior said. He pulled a tray of golden brown bread twists out of the oven and basted them with melted butter. Cloves of garlic had been inserted into the top of each one, and I could see the cloves had softened under the heat. My mouth watered, rendering the imaginary zipper/lock/key barricade useless.

  “He did tell you what happened last night, didn’t he?” I asked. “At the showroom?”

  “Vandals,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “Kid’s having a rough time of things. I told him owning the company wasn’t going to be easy when he bought me out but he said he wanted to be full owner.”

  I picked up a garlic twist from the tray, immediately dropping it from the heat. Nick Senior picked it up with a checkered towel and tossed it back onto the baking tray. “You gotta learn to be less impatient.”

  “That’s one of my character flaws.”

  He laughed. “There’s a difference between impatience and getting stuff done. You get stuff done and I like that.”

  “Hey,” I said. He looked at me over the top of his glasses. “The vandalism at Nick’s showroom wasn’t regular vandalism. Somebody smashed his window with a concrete block. That’s not the kind of thing high schoolers do.”

  “He get the shiner at the showroom? Something fall on him?”

  “No, that was later. I don’t think he wants you to know this, but we went to get a pizza at Brother’s and one of the owners came right up to us and punched him.”

  Nick Senior threw the towel onto the counter. “One of the owners? Mitch or Jimmy?”

  “Jimmy.”

  “You know who he is, right?”

  “Sure. He’s one of the brothers. He’s been serving me pizza since I was in junior high.”

  “He’s Jimmy the Tomato.”

  “I heard that name before. Why do you call him that?”

  “He puts the squeeze on people for the mob.” Nick Senior hesitated a moment before continuing. “He’s also Vito Cantone’s godson.”

  15

  Wednesday night

  “Jimmy the pizza guy is a mobster?” I asked.

  “Vito Cantone is a mobster. Jimmy is his godson. You draw your own conclusions.”

  “I’ve lived in Ribbon my whole life. Most of my whole life. Most of my adult life. Okay, fine. I’ve lived here for two years of my adult life. You mean there’s been a whole criminal activity circuit taking place under my nose and I never even knew it?”

  “There are bad guys everywhere. You should know that better than most.”

  “How do you know Vito?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds it might incriminate me.” He stared at me for a beat. “Go check on my kid while I finish dinner.” He turned his back on me and attended to the garlic twists.

  I went to the living room to find Nick. He wasn’t there. I wandered into the hallway toward his room. The door was shut. I knocked. After a few seconds, he opened it up. He held his phone to his shoulder, the display facing him so I couldn’t see the screen. “Is dinner ready?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll be out right after I finish up this call.” He eased the door shut while I stood there.

  See, now this was a conundrum. I was only inches from the door, so to put my ear up against the wood would really not have requ
ired all that much effort. Chances were, if Nick spoke at a regular decibel, I could pick out a word or two without even moving. But Nick was on the other side of that door, and judging from the silence, he wasn’t speaking at a normal decibel, which meant he probably didn’t want me to hear his conversation. And there was a good chance that listening in on his private conversation wasn’t the type of thing featured in the How To Be A Good Fiancé handbook. It definitely wasn’t something Samantha 2.0 would do.

  Unless Nick was in trouble and didn’t know how to ask for my help. If that was the case, then I needed to do whatever was necessary. The ends justify the means. I’m pretty sure that’s in some handbook somewhere.

  I leaned forward and put my head against the wood. The door opened. I straightened up too fast and made myself dizzy. Nick slipped his phone into the pocket of his shirt. “You’re still here.”

  “My shoelace was untied.” We both looked down at my boots. They had a zipper on the side, no laces. “I thought I was wearing a different pair,” I added.

  “Sure.”

  Nick’s troubles had been weighing on him and exhaustion lurked behind the black eye and the relatively recent emotional mask. I couldn’t lie to him. I couldn’t let there be secrets between us.

  “We have to talk.” I put my hand on his chest and applied enough pressure that he took a step back, into his bedroom, then another. I followed. It was like a super slow motion Tango without music or a rose in either one of our teeth.

  I shut the door behind me. Nick put his hands on my waist and bent down to kiss me. I pulled away from him. “When I said talk, I meant talk.”

  “What’s on your mind, Kidd?”

  “Nick, I’m freaking out here. Your assistant was murdered under questionable circumstances. The next night, your store front was vandalized and there are no witnesses. That’s not rowdy high school kids annoyed about going back to school after holiday break. It takes serious coordination to pull off something like that.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “And I’ve got this photo shoot for Tradava, and I looked at a bunch of factories today but the only one that’s going to work is Vito’s, and I know you don’t want me to use his but one of the owners of Tradava knows him and said he’d make it happen. And now if I do my job, you’re going to think I’m going behind your back, but I’m not. And that’s another thing. I like my job and I’m good at it. And right now, I feel like I can’t do my job without checking with you first and I don’t think I’m cut out to be that kind of wife.”