Cement Stilettos

by Diane Vallere

  “She wasn’t there to sell you something, was she?” I asked gently.

  “No. She said her mom had kept my identity a secret all those years to protect both of us from Lucky, but after he was killed, she couldn’t think of a good reason not to tell me the truth.”

  “So you believed her? Did you do a DNA test or ask for further proof?”

  “I didn’t need any proof.” He looked down at his hands. “Junior’s mother had a hard time during childbirth. After he was born, we agreed not to try again. I had a vasectomy. No way I was Angela’s father.”

  “But you didn’t tell Angela that, did you?”

  “The kid waited twenty years to come see me because she was afraid of what Lucky might do if he found out. She asked if she could visit me once in a while so we could get to know each other.”

  “This was last year? You were still living in New York, weren’t you?”

  He nodded. “It was before I fell and broke my hip. Once a week she’d come over after her classes were done and we’d talk. She was a bright girl and she had a future.”

  “You let her believe something that wasn’t true.”

  “If I told her I wasn’t her father, she’d either think Lucky was—a bad guy who’d been responsible for a lot of crime on the streets of New York—or that her mom had slept around. I knew her mother during those years. She was a lady. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that she’d gotten caught up in a bad situation. Our time together wasn’t about her trying to get a line on something. It was because she was trying to make something of herself. I wish I had seen that at the time. I would have done things differently.”

  “Angela didn’t start working for Nick until after that. She didn’t just show up with a resume and talk herself into a job, did she?”

  “She needed a job and Nick needed a showroom manager. I told him I’d screen candidates for him and I sent her his way. Until recently, her secret was safe with me.”

  “You didn’t tell him the truth?”

  “I know I’m not going to live forever. I didn’t see any harm in letting Angela believe she found her dad and that he was a good guy who started a shoe company forty years ago. Back when I knew her mother, it was my job to take care of Nick. Now he’s grown up and somehow it’s his job to take care of me. I didn’t want to burden him with another problem.”

  “When Nick’s showroom was broken into, the only thing stolen was Angela’s personnel file. Depending on what was in there, somebody else either knows the truth or believes your lie.”

  The story of Angela’s background and Nick’s dad’s decision to let her believe something good about it, stacked up on top of the knowledge that Nick had sacrificed his college tuition in order to get the family shoe company out of debt, left me wondering if I was capable of making the same kind of selfless decisions. Only hours ago, when I thought Nick had been keeping mafia ties from me, I’d told him the engagement was off and I never wanted to hear from him again. I didn’t know where we stood in the wake of that argument outside of the fire hall. And then I remembered my car, the explosion, and why we were sitting in a police station after midnight on a Wednesday.

  I’ve heard people say it’s important to reflect on how we got where we are. I wasn’t sure if this was one of those times.

  I stifled a yawn and considered drinking a cup of coffee from the pot in the corner. Nick Senior followed my gaze. “That coffee’s been sitting there since this afternoon. You should be heading home. Let me see if Detective Loncar needs anything else from you.”

  I smiled and thanked him. After he left the room, I stood up and stared at the map on the wall. All this time, I had no idea there was organized crime in Ribbon. No wonder Loncar was cranky. Fighting crime was exhausting.

  Left alone in the room, I yawned again, this time not bothering to hide it. The door opened and Loncar came in. “Get your things. I’ll give you a ride to your house.”

  I shrugged on my coat and followed him to the parking lot. He aimed his remote at the car and I reached for the back door. “You’re not under arrest and I’m not your driver. Sit in the front.”

  I shut the back door and climbed into the passenger side, buckled myself in, and rested my head against the seat. Loncar started the car and we were on our way.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You’re not normally this quiet.”

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  He pulled onto the highway. “Want to talk about it?”

  I turned my head and looked at him. “How do you know what I talk about isn’t related to your investigation? You never want me to talk about your investigations.”

  “It’s late, I’m tired. Your car blew up earlier today and I suspect the reality of the past twenty-four hours won’t hit you until you wake up tomorrow morning and question if you dreamt the whole thing. I’m going to give you some leeway.”

  I looked out the front window, the lines on the side of the highway temporarily lulling me into a near-hypnotic state. After about a mile of silence, I spoke. “I accused Nick of being involved with the mob and he didn’t deny it. He told me he was hoping I’d never find out. I got so mad that I told him the engagement was off. And then my car blew up. What if those had been the last words I ever said to him?”

  “They weren’t.”

  “But what if?”

  “What if is bullshit. You can’t live your life on what if.” The roads were empty, and we were already at my exit. Loncar pulled onto the ramp and then drove the remaining distance to my house. He either had a good memory, or I’d officially brought the police to my house too many times.

  He pulled into my driveway and kept the engine on. “If I quit the force when my wife wanted me to, a lot more bad guys would be on the streets. If my daughter hadn’t seen firsthand what life with a cop is like, she might have married one, and I wouldn’t want that life for her. If I hadn’t taken that getaway to Tahiti over the holidays, my wife wouldn’t have wanted me back.” He jutted his chin toward the dashboard. “And if I hadn’t plugged your address into my nav system before we left, I wouldn’t get to watch you wonder what it means that a homicide detective knows the way to your house.” He smiled. “Now get out and go spend time with your cat.”

  “Thank you for the ride,” I said. “And for letting me hear the truth from Nick’s dad.”

  “Good guys. Both of them,” Loncar said. “Sure would like to see them come out of this one on top.”

  “You and me both.” I shut the door behind me.

  The next morning, I woke to the sound of the alarm on my phone. It was six thirty. A note, written in my own handwriting, said, “Get up, make coffee, and call Eddie for a ride into work. Your car really did blow up. It was not a dream.”

  Logan woke too. He stood up and stretched, and then walked the length of the bed and face-butted me with the top of his head. I kissed him and then pulled him into a kitty snuggle and kept him there as long as he let me. I gave him credit for not wriggling out of my grasp for close to a minute.

  I showered and dressed in a blue turtleneck sweater, black wide legged trousers with a blue windowpane pattern, and black pointy toed boots. I added a necklace of interlocking wooden squares, an oversized wood bracelet, dried my hair and secured it away from my face in a low ponytail, and went to the kitchen. Eddie rang the bell while my Pop-Tarts were toasting. I opened the door and he stood there, on the other side of my screen door, holding a newspaper out in front of his face. The headline screamed, “Great Meatballs of Fire: Explosion at Spaghetti Fundraiser Raises More Than Funds.”

  While I was learning the truth about Angela di Sotto’s background and Nick’s dad’s involvement with the mafia, Carl Collins had been busy.

  I snatched the newspaper from Eddie and went back to the kitchen. He followed me and took one of the Pop-Tarts from the plate next to the toaster. I glared at him and he bit the corner off. “Read,” he said with a full mouth. “I’ll make more.”

  Last
night, a sold-out spaghetti fundraiser at the Canal Street Fire hall ended not with a bang but with a boom when a car parked in the lot out front exploded. The car belonged to Samantha Kidd, fiancé of local shoe designer Nick Taylor.

  Taylor’s troubles started earlier in the week when his showroom manager, Angela di Sotto, was found dead inside his place of business. Further vandalism prompted the fundraiser, which was organized quickly and quietly. It is not known if the explosion at the fundraiser was specifically aimed at Ms. Kidd in a message to Mr. Taylor or if it was a random act of violence.

  I put the paper down. “Did you read this?”

  “It’s on the front page and it’s the lead story on their website. I bet half of Ribbon has read it.”

  “He all but says someone is after Nick and they’re using me to get to him.”

  Eddie bit off a second hunk of Pop-Tart. “I’m not Carl’s biggest fan, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to draw that conclusion. Just yesterday we were talking about the possibility that Nick was involved with the mob.”

  “That was yesterday. Things changed.”

  “So I read.”

  The toaster popped up with the second round of Pop-Tarts and I snatched them, and then tossed both onto a nearby plate to let them cool. “I’ve learned more in the past twenty-four hours than I learned through an entire semester on the history of uniforms. I feel like Neo in The Matrix after they plugged him into the computer.”

  “Must be good,” he said. He poured a mug of coffee and sat down at my kitchen table. “Last time we talked, you thought Nick was a member of the family. I mean, I know your conclusion was based on the fact that Jimmy the Tomato slugged him in the parking lot of Brothers Pizza, but the evidence still says mafia to me.”

  “Jimmy the Tomato. How did you know to call him that?”

  “That’s what everybody calls him. Probably because his name is Jimmy and he makes pizza for a living.”

  “The boy who was watching the cars in front of the fire hall said his dad dropped off the food and was going to pick him up after he closed the restaurant.”

  “You’re doing that thing you do, where you say stuff that seems to mean something to you but to me sounds like jibberish.”

  “There was a boy hanging around the fire hall yesterday. He said his dad brought the food and somebody inside said Jimmy from Brothers did all of their fundraisers. The kid was scamming people five dollars to watch their cars.”

  “And you didn’t pay him. Way to kill the young entrepreneurial spirit.”

  “That’s not it. His dad is Jimmy the Tomato. He has to be. The boy knew exactly which car was mine. When the fundraiser was over, he took my keys to drive it around, but he got out and left the engine running.”

  “How come?”

  “He said he was afraid I was going to stiff him again and he wanted to be paid up front.” I broke my Pop-Tart in half and pointed the slightly burned corner at Eddie. “What if his dad arranged for him to blow up my car?”

  20

  Thursday morning

  “You said he was a just a kid,” Eddie said. “Would a kid blow up a car over five dollars?”

  “No.” I bit my Pop-Tart and chewed. After I swallowed, I continued. “But he might blow it up for a whole lot more.”

  I filled two travel mugs for Eddie and me, cleaned Logan’s litterbox, and left him a bowl filled with tuna and cheese flavored cat food. A couple of months ago the vet had declared Logan overweight and we’d both gone on a diet of sorts. But too many life-is-short moments made it hard to give up my pizza, pretzels, and ice cream diet, so I’d compromised. Logan went back to his favorite brand of cat food and I accepted vegetables into my life. Though there were definitely days when the definition of “vegetable” morphed into “it came out of the ground so it must be healthy.” And if it was fried on top of that, well, that was between me and my waistband.

  Eddie drove us the short distance to Tradava. We made plans to meet for lunch and went our separate directions. I was eager to throw myself into work.

  I sat down behind my desk and woke up my computer. For the first time since rounding the corner, I noticed boxes stacked along the wall under a sign I’d pinned there that said Photo Shoot Samples Here. I printed out the checklist that I’d made of samples needed for the shoot and then spent the next hour and a half organizing what had been dropped off. The problem-solving part of my brain was going to have to operate from the back burner.

  Possibly my favorite part of my job was planning the details of an editorial layout in Retrofit for Tradava. The magazine’s approach back when Nancie first started it had been to look to past decades of fashion and use them as a jumping off point for how we dressed today. So many aspects of day to day life had become underwhelming and personal style was on the verge of being frozen in a mashup of nineties grunge and athleisure. My job was to use the glossy medium of the Retrofit for Tradava catalog to elevate it back into something that inspired people to shop.

  As I moved the colorful skirt suit samples from their boxes to a portable rack on the side of the room, I knew the era I’d be using as inspiration would be the eighties. Not the neon/lace/fishnet trends that so many people associated with the me-decade, but the tailored suits of Chanel, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass and Geoffrey Beene. It would showcase a return to early feminist professional glamour.

  Once the suits were hung on the rack, I took my checklist and went out into the store. The store’s promotional calendar had shifted from post-holiday sales to end-of-season clearance. I headed past racks of sixty-five-percent-off markdowns and tables of last-of-their-kind handbags to the accessories department. Pam Trotter and Otto Tradava were talking to the department manager about a new shipment of scarves that had been delivered that morning.

  “Samantha,” Pam said. “Are we on track for the photo shoot?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “I came down to pull the accessories that we’ll be using.” I turned to the manager. “Can you give me twelve pair of black opaque tights, size tall? I’m going to need some sunglasses and gloves, too.”

  “Is that your list?” he asked.

  I nodded and handed it to him. “The advertising expense number is on the bottom. You can charge us back at cost for the tights, but I expect to only need the sunglasses and gloves on loan. They should be back to you early next week.”

  “I’ll go get the tights. Pick out the glasses you want and I’ll unlock them when I get back.”

  Otto listened with interest. When the manager excused himself and left for his stockroom, Pam smiled. “I told you, Otto, Samantha is one to watch. She’s doing great things for us.”

  “Are your factory problems all ironed out?” Otto asked.

  “Yes, thank you. The whole thing came together. Well, except for the shoes.”

  Pam looked concerned. “I thought Nick said he could have them sent in for us?”

  I wasn’t willing to air Nick’s dirty laundry in front of one of his biggest accounts. “Problem with customs,” I said. “Fish and wildlife flagged the shipment for inspection. They might arrive, but I don’t want to leave anything up to chance so I’m going to expense out shoes from inventory.”

  “I thought the samples you had requested were black suede? Why is fish and wildlife involved?”

  Darn it. Think, Samantha, think. “The factory used heels that were wrapped in lizard skin instead of leather—they had an overage of skins from a previous order and because of the narrow timetable they went ahead with them. If they do arrive, we can color correct in post-production.”

  Both of the executives relaxed noticeably. “Lizard heels will raise the price of the shoes, and with all of this pre-season exposure, might be the perfect thing to give women an excuse to buy yet another pair of black shoes,” Pam said. “I know you have experience as a shoe buyer, so this isn’t news to you. Use your judgment. This may be the start of a whole new trend.”

  “An exclusive trend,” Otto added.

  Sure
. Best case scenario, Nick would corner a whole new market. I wondered if he’d see it that way when I told him the news.

  21

  Thursday afternoon

  Pam and Otto moved on to the handbag department and I peered into the sunglasses case and narrowed down my choices. A top-of-counter fixture displayed a collection of oversized gold frames with colorful lenses. I thought back to the suit samples in my office, and then amassed a pile of glasses that would coordinate with the colors. I slipped on a pair with blue lenses and felt a tap on my shoulder. I whirled around and faced Eddie.

  “If you tell me this,” he waved his hands around the glasses on my head, “is considered working, then I’m going straight to my office to apply for a transfer.”

  “You want Nancie’s job?”

  “Not if it means somebody else would be responsible for the visual standards of the store. Have you seen what they did in the candy department? Ragu thought it was a good idea to cut the flaps off the shipping containers and stack the boxes next to the register. Who are these people? Were they raised by wolves?”

  “Yes, you’re right. Making chocolates accessible to the buying public is the universal sign of wolf raising.” He made a face. “I’m pulling stock for the photo shoot.”

  “That’s still on?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? That’s my job, and as the owners of the company now have seen, I’m good at my job.”

  “I assumed after last night your priorities would have changed.”

  “To what?”

  “To helping Nick get out of this. Did you tell him you’re using Vito’s factory even though he explicitly asked you not to?”

  “No, that didn’t come up. Besides I don’t think he’d care so much about that now.”

  Eddie looked dumbfounded. “Why not? You said there’s a connection between Vito Cantone and Angela di Sotto. And that Vito has mafia ties. How come you’re so willing to rule him out of the suspect pool for what’s been happening?”